US-China trade relations have implications for global nitrogen and phosphorus surpluses, and increasing blue water demand. The case shows that trade policy analysis needs to integrate environmental considerations.

Demand response uses smart technologies to lower peak electricity load by either shifting demand to non-peak hours or directly shaving peak demand. DR is a fast-growing market in which commercial and industrial customers are the primary providers of resources; however, DR helps heavy electrical consumers save energy and avoid demand charges, and it helps utilities save money and deter investment on expensive transmission and distribution lines. DR also has great potential to balance renewables by providing ramping and flexibility services to the electricity market. This capacity is increasingly important to electrical grids, as is the integration of more renewable energy.

In 2019, we conducted a survey of family farms in Iowa with the support of the Beginning Farmer Center and Iowa State University Extension and Outreach. Our goal is to compare the attitudes and motives behind farm succession, with a focus on intangible assets rather than physical assets, revealed in our 2019 survey with those revealed in the 2006 Iowa Farm Transfer Project. Our hope is that the data obtained in 2019 and 2006 in the state of Iowa will provide insights into the mechanics of farm business transfers over time.

The COVID-19 pandemic is crippling the global economy and heightening distrust and political disagreements among major countries. Furthermore, ongoing deglobalization efforts taken by firms and countries are fueling the rise of economic nationalism. A prime example is the possible decoupling of U.S.-China economic and trade relations, which the ongoing trade war has already significantly disrupted. This paper analyzes the impacts of COVID-19 on U.S. agricultural exports to China, especially the added delays and uncertainty on China’s food imports meeting the U.S.-China phase one trade deal target. I present the views of U.S. farmers and the general public toward China and argue that healthy U.S.-China agricultural trade relations are not only critical for both countries but welcomed by U.S. farmers. I also discuss the possible rise in non-tariff barriers following the pandemic as well as trade policies that are increasingly intertwined with political tensions. Finally, I discuss how the U.S.-China phase one trade deal could possibly lead to a more balanced bilateral agricultural trade portfolio with greater share of protein and retail food products.

President Biden proposed the American Families Plan (AFP) on April 28, 2021, to provide new social programs to millions of Americans. To pay for this $1.8 trillion benefits package, the AFP proposes significantly changing the way capital gain is taxed. The Administration has explained that “reforms to the taxation of capital gains and qualified dividends will reduce economic disparities among Americans and raise needed revenue.” Specifically, the AFP proposes increasing the top marginal tax rate, taxing some capital gain at ordinary income tax rates, and subjecting more gain to the 3.8% Medicare tax. The AFP would thus boost the top federal rate at which some capital gain is taxed to 43.4% in 2022 and beyond.

Discrete choice experiments have been extensively used to value environmental quality; however, some important attributes may be often omitted due to design challenges. In the case of agricultural water pollution, overlooking downstream water quality benefits could lead to biased estimates and misinterpretations of local water quality attributes presented in the choice experiments. Using a split-sample design and a statewide survey of Iowa residents, we provide the first systematic evaluation of how households’ willingness-to-pay for water quality change when downstream water quality benefits, hypoxic zone reduction in our case, are omitted. We find that omitting non-local water quality attributes significantly reduces the total economic value of nutrient reduction programs but does not bias the marginal willingness-to-pay for local water quality attributes. We also find suggestive evidence showing that such omission, in line with the theoretical prediction, only changes the preferences of respondents who are aware of the downstream impacts of local water quality improvement plans. In addition, our results show that providing information on the non-local water quality benefits of nutrient reduction makes respondents less informed about the water quality issues more likely to support the water quality improvement plans.

U.S. farmers have suffered a lot in the past few years: The trade war with China , natural disasters and the COVID-19 pandemic have all resulted in substantial losses for many producers.

Political and economic tensions, which often jeopardize trade, are rising among the world’s major powers, and countries like China are more frequently using food-related trade actions to deal with deteriorating political relations. Previous literature largely focuses on how brief, short-lived political tensions affect bilateral trade; however, little is known about firm-level trade responses to long-termpolitical tensions. This paper investigates how importers respond to long-term political tensions by examining the six-year Norway-China political tensions that ended in 2016. In particular, we use an event study approach to examine China’s seafood importers’ responses to China’s 2010 sanction on Norwegian fresh salmon imports after Norway awarded Liu Xiaobo, a Chinese political dissident, a Nobel Peace Prize. Our results reveal firm-level responses at both the extensive and intensive margins. At the intensive margin, firms that imported Norwegian fresh salmon before the sanction saw a 20% persistent decline in their fresh salmon import value and an 80% decrease in import share of Norwegian fresh salmon products over our study period. At the extensive margin, we not only find a trade diversion effect on firms importing from other countries and less firms importing fresh salmon from Norway, but also a permanent "political hedging" effect with a 20% decline in the maximum import share from any particular country, even if not Norway. We also provide evidence of persistent sanction effects even after China-Norway relations unfroze. Our findings emphasize the need to consider the long-term sanction consequences in foreign policy using food-related trade sanctions.

Opinion surveys are the dominant method to gauge U.S. farmland values. However, there lacks a systematic evaluation of how opinions are formulated and adjust over time. Using a panel data of 311 agricultural professionals from the Iowa Land Value Survey from 2005 to 2015, we investigate how surveyed experts update their farmland value estimates. We find that experts almost fully correct their prior “errors” in a single period. Experts’ opinions also incorporate most of the prevailing price innovations in one period. Our Bayesian estimation technique simultaneously addresses the non-stationarity of farmland values and the Nickell bias in short dynamic panels.

In June and July 2020, severe floods wreaked havoc in many provinces in southern China (Wong 2020). China’s Ministry of Emergency Management reported that rainfall during this year’s rain season reached 759.2 mm, which is more than twice the usual amount and the highest level since 1961.1 According to news from the State Council Information Office, as of August 13, 2020, the heavy rainfall has affected 27 provinces, 63 million people, and led to a direct loss of $26 billion, which is around 0.21% of China’s estimated 2020 GDP. Specifically, the floods affected 6.03 million hectares of cropland, with 1.14 million hectares of crop failure, mostly concentrated in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River basin.2 To put the affected cropland into perspective, the total summer crop sown area in 2020 is 26.17 million hectares; therefore, the floods affected 23% of the planted area of summer crops and caused 4.3% crop failure. After severe flooding in the Yangtze River basin, heavy rain also hit Sichuan and Shandong in mid-August, causing more agricultural production loss and pushing food prices further.