Bilateral trade agreements between Japan and major wine-exporting countries have resulted in tariff eliminations in Japan. This raises questions about how tariffs affect the competitiveness of wine-exporting countries. The generalized dynamic Rotterdam model was used in estimating Japanese wine demand by source. Estimates were then used to project the impact of tariffs on imports of Australian, Chilean, French, German, Italian, Spanish, and U.S. wine. Tariff reductions primarily benefit affected countries, with limited adverse effects on competing countries. The elimination of tariffs on U.S. wine should offset any losses from competing trade agreements.

Super-premium fruit and vegetable juices and drinks are a rapidly emerging product subcategory. We use retail-level scanner data to analyze trends in sales of and demand for super-premium and other fruit and vegetable beverages. We find that super-premium beverages represent a small share—about 6 percent in terms of dollar sales in 2012—of the overall fruit and vegetable juice and drink market and are priced considerably higher. Total sales more than doubled between 2007 and 2012 with 16 percent annual growth, and the beverages were more responsive to changes in price than other fruit and vegetable juices and drinks.

Several studies have estimated plant nutrient demand functions for nitrogen, phosphate, and potash. All included own-price effects but excluded prices of jointly applied nutrients. In this study, nutrient demand functions, which include prices of all three nutrients, are estimated for Tennessee by seemingly unrelated regression. Results suggest that cross-price eflfects are important in determining plant nutrient demand, at least in the case of Tennessee, and that multicollinearity need not be a hindrance in all cases to including cross-price eflfects in plant nutrient demand models.

In this study, both the Rotterdam model and the double logarithmic model were used to estimate the demand parameters for fruit beverages. The results show that: (1) under the conditions of block-independence and predetermined price changes, the Slutsky matrix for fruit beverages is symmetric and negative definite; (2) own-price elasticity estimates from both models are about the same; and (3) income elasticity estimates and cross-product relationships from the two models are not compatible.

Japanese import demand for U.S. beef and pork products and the effects on domestic livestock prices are econometrically estimated. Japan is the most important export market for U.S. beef and pork products. Results indicate foreign income, exchange rates, and protectionist measures are statistically significant. The comparative statics quantify the effects of recent economic volatility. For example, the 1995-1998 depreciation in the Japanese yen (39%) reduced U.S. slaughter steer and hog prices by $1.29 per cwt and $0.99 per cwt, respectively, while the 1994-1998 reduction in tariffs (14%) increased slaughter steer and hog prices by $0.49 per cwt and $0.33 per cwt, respectively. Livestock producers will continue to have a vested interest in Asian trade liberalization policies.

The general method of moments procedure is used for estimating a soybean acreage response function assuming that producers hold rational expectations. Results indicate that soybean, corn, and wheat futures prices, lagged acreage, and government programs are significant factors for determining soybean plantings. Implications of the results are that crop acreage selection by Georgia producers is not very responsive to demand shocks. Thus, producers in other regions are more likely to absorb impacts from these shocks on crop acreage selection.

A recent study by Miljkovic, Marsh, and Brester estimates that reductions in the Japanese tariff-rate quota between 1993 and 2001 increased U.S. beef prices by $1.03 per cwt and yen depreciation between 1995 and 1998 reduced U.S. hog prices by $0.99 per cwt. Relaxing the assumption that U.S. beef and hog supplies are fixed cuts the total elasticities underlying these estimates by 50% or more. The upshot is that shocks in the Japanese market have little effect on U.S. beef and pork prices. Hence, producers may be better off focusing on domestic issues such as dietary concerns over red meat consumption.

A multinomial logit is utilized to model the choice of whether to purchase yield or revenue insurance using subjectively elicited survey data. Our results indicate that the demand for crop insurance is inelastic (−0.40), consistent with most earlier yield elasticity estimates, but the elasticity for choices between yield and revenue insurance is found to be relatively more elastic (−0.88).