Wirtschaftszahlen: This database contains general data on the development of agricultural producer and input prices, the consumer price index and foreign trade in agricultural and food goods on a monthly basis for the previous 24 months. In addition, this database comprises important volume and price developments on national and international markets for selected product groups of agricultural products such as grain, livestock, meat, milk and dairy products as well as vegetables, fruit and sugar. This file is only available in German.
We conduct a robustness reproduction of Ammann et al. (2023), published in Food Quality and Preference, who examine how consumers evaluate the importance of animal welfare as an agricultural policy goal relative to potentially competing objectives. Using the publicly available data, we first provide a reproduction of the original results and then perform a robustness reproduction that relaxes the linearity assumption through a Machine Learning (ML) work-flow. The original association patterns are reproducible, while the ML extension uncovers modest nonlinearities with limited gains in explanatory power. Overall, this study illustrates a simple and transparent workflow that complements standard OLS-based replication with data-driven specifications, thereby supporting transparency and reproducibility in applied agricultural economics.
Applied price transmission analysis is often carried out with temporally aggregated data. However, the effects of temporal aggregation on estimation and interpretation are largely ignored in the price transmission literature. Following Marcelino (1999) we show how temporal aggregation affects the parameters of the vector error correction models (VECMs) that are commonly used in price transmission analysis. Temporal aggregation does not affect the parameters of the long-run equilibrium relationships between prices, but it does affect the adjustment and autoregressive parameters that describe the short-run dynamics of price adjustment. Temporal aggregation also introduces moving average components into the error terms of VECMs. We present a Monte Carlo experiment and an application to wheat prices in the EU and the US to illustrate how failure to account for these moving average effects further distorts estimates of the dynamics of price transmission. These results have important implications. First, estimation with different temporal aggregates of the same price data will lead to differing and sometimes contradictory conclusions regarding the speed of price transmission, impulse-response patterns and price discovery. Second, it is not possible to derive conclusions regarding the dynamics of price adjustment at a higher frequency from estimates generated with lower-frequency data. In general, reliable insights into the dynamics of price transmission can only be generated if the frequency of the data employed in estimation coincides with the time decision intervals of the agents whose transactions determine prices.
The family farm is a unique institution where the farm household balances family members’ needs with farm business demands. Building on the farm household model, this study identifies and characterizes distinct farmer types based on their perceptions of endogenous and exogenous factors. Social capital is considered a crucial resource in this process, helping farmers manage challenges and secure the farm's future. Using survey data (n = 482) from Styrian farmers, we identified three distinct farmer types: ‘financially strong and satisfied with vocation’, ‘struggling and overworked’ and ‘farming for family heritage and tradition’. Our analysis reveals that the ‘struggling and overworked’ type, which is characterized by higher levels of debt and lower social capital, reports significantly higher levels of stress. This type is also more likely to suffer work-related accidents and less likely to engage in stress-mitigating behaviors such as taking vacations or exercising. In contrast, the ‘financially strong and satisfied with vocation’ type is associated with higher social capital, lower levels of stress and a greater propensity for stress-mitigating behaviors. This research contributes to a better understanding of the factors influencing farmers’ feeling of stress and highlights the crucial role of social capital as a stress-mitigating factor.
This paper develops and implements an analytical framework combining spatial space techniques with panel stochastic frontier models to assess and benchmark time-varying market efficiency, with China’s pork market serving as the empirical application. We analyze spatial and temporal dynamics in adjustment speeds and compare inefficiency under a range of translog frontier specifications and market characteristics. The estimated market efficiency frontiers decline with greater geographic distances but improve with greater inter-market trade volume. Our analysis indicates that the Chinese pork market experiences significant inefficiencies (approximately 50%) in the speed of adjustment. The higher inefficiency is associated with rising diesel fuel prices. Roughly 35% of this inefficiency stems from short-term or transient shocks, and about 25% results from persistent, structural market characteristics. Overall, the study demonstrates that overlooking persistent inefficiency leads to an overestimation of the market’s ability to restore or maintain efficient spatial price transmission over time.
