Книги

Applied econometric analyses of market integration based on price data alone have been criticised, because they neglect the role of transaction costs. To meet this objection threshold vector error correction models are used. Threshold models can account for the effects of transaction costs in price transmission without directly relying upon information about these costs, which are often unavailable. Results from threshold models that are based on two thresholds provide results that are economically more intuitive than those obtained from one threshold models. However there is no adequate econometric test for threshold significance in a two- threshold model available so far; such tests are only available for the one threshold model. In this paper a restricted two-threshold model is developed in which the significance of the thresholds can be tested. This model is therefore amenable to economic interpretation and statistical inference. This model is used to estimate market integration on the European pig market.

In this paper we present a methodology to analyse input use in the agricultural sector. The novelty of the theoretical model explained is that it has been developed considering a multi-criteria environment. Thus, the optimal input use condition is determined by the assessment of "multi-attribute utility" and "multi-attribute marginal utility". We show how the approach adopted in this paper is a generalization of the single-attribute expected utility theory. The theoretical model developed is further implemented in an empirical application that studies water for irrigation use as a particular case. Results show how multi-attribute utility functions elicited for a sample of 52 irrigators explain differences on irrigation water use in relative homogenous agricultural systems, albeit exhibiting similar water partial utility functions. We conclude that these differences come from the dissimilar weights that farmers attached to each attribute in the aggregate utility function. The irrigated area considered as case study is located in North-western Spain.