Consumer demand analysis attracts considerable attention. It remains an open question, however, whether estimating demand with aggregate data is reliable when disaggregate store-level data is given. Demand models may produce biased results when applied to data aggregated across stores with...

Employing the error correction method and historical decomposition with direct acyclic graphs, we quantify the impacts of domestic and oversea animal disease crises on the Korean meat markets. We find that (a) the market partially recovered 16 months after the foot-and-mouth outbreak in 2000,...

Because of the recent soaring petroleum price and growing environmental concerns, biodiesel has become an important alternative fuel. Biodiesel is the mono alky esters made from a vegetable oil, such as soybean or rapeseed oil, or sometimes from animal fats. The escalation in world petroleum...

Transportation rates are vital components in the structure of U.S. grain exports. In this paper we study the dynamic properties of corn and soybean prices, and barge, rail and ocean shipping rates using time series analysis on monthly 1992-2001 data. Using Error Correction Model and Directed...

The 2005 food crisis centered in Niger received worldwide attention and extensive media coverage. Crops suffered from poor rainfall and were plagued by locusts throughout the growing season. Malnutrition flourished with the sudden disruption in food supplies. One-fifth of Niger's children...

The bank lending channel states that changes in monetary policy cause changes in bank loans thus causing changes in real income. This implies the Federal Reserve can influence real income by controlling the level of intermediated loans. We apply a new method to test for an operative bank lending...

Economic theory is replete with causal hypotheses that are scarcely tested because economists are generally constrained to work with observational data. This article describes the use of causal inference methods for testing a hypothesis that one random variable causes another. Contingent on a...