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This paper aims to examine the applicable legal framework, various concerns regarding the price support methodology and the merits and pitfalls of the Bali peace clause that currently shields India’s public stockholding (PSH) policy, to provide suggestions on moving forward in the World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations.

At the WTO, PSH for food security is considered a trade-distorting price support measure when food stocks are purchased from farmers at administered prices instead of market prices. The price support is measured by a specific methodology stipulated under the Agreement on Agriculture. India is concerned that the price support methodology overestimates the actual support provided to the farmers and makes India susceptible to violating the WTO law.

The paper explains the domestic implications for India arising due to the applicable WTO law. Given the centrality of India’s PSH programmes in ensuring food security, India must seek more clarity on the interpretation of Article 18.4 of the AoA and the ambiguous provisions of the Bali peace clause.

The paper provides a timely and updated analysis of the contentious issue of PSH for food security, exclusively from the Indian perspective, highlighting the persisting challenges for India in WTO agriculture negotiations. This is timely as many WTO members have raised serious concerns about India’s market price support policies recently and this analysis informs the reader about the underlying issues.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a modelling approach that enables the analysis of long-term food security policies. Specifically, the authors explore the effect of China’s agricultural domestic support on its agricultural and food market by also considering the impact of incomplete price transmission.

The authors extend the standard Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) modelling framework. First, the authors incorporate incomplete price transmission into the GTAP model by generating tariff-equivalent price transmission elasticities. Second, the authors improve the current representation of China’s agricultural domestic support in the GTAP model and the underlying database by considering the production requirements and the trade-distorting effect of different policy instruments. Running a set of simulations, the authors examine first how the incorporation of incomplete price transmission affects the model’s results and second how increased agricultural domestic support affects China’s agricultural and food market accounting for incomplete price transmission.

Considering incomplete price transmission mitigates the domestic price increases as responses to high international agricultural prices, which also lead to an increase in China’s trade deficit and prohibits net food sellers from receiving high prices. In the long term, an increase in China’s agricultural domestic support to its World Trade Organisation de minimis commitment level would increase domestic agricultural production and reduce its demand pressure on the international market.

This paper contributes to the literature by examining the impact of increased agricultural domestic support on the domestic market while innovatively accounting for incomplete food price transmission. The authors combine econometric estimated price transmission elasticities and an extended GTAP framework to underscore the importance of enhancing the model’s ability in accounting for incomplete price transmission when analysing the impact of agricultural policies.

The debate to find a solution for domestic price support under the WTO Agreement on Agriculture (AOA) has been a long one. The stance of India is critical to determine due to its large population. This paper aims to analyse the benefits or demerits of minimum price support and what approach could be adopted by India.

The paper is a mix of both analytical and theoretical research. The paper first provides a background on the issues related to public stockholding and further analyses some data at which India procures wheat and rice from the farmers and then compares it with retail market prices in India.

The paper finds that the difference in price between minimum price support and retail market prices in India for wheat and rice is minimal. Therefore, the concern that India might be taking advantage of the minimum price is uncalled for. India also needs to balance its own interests as well as abide by its WTO obligations. The paper finds that cooperation among countries or regional blocks might help to address the problem of food insecurity.

The paper portrays India’s stance with regard to WTO AOA as well as studies the Indian market for wheat and rice.

The purpose of this paper is to, using a large sample of NASDAQ initial public offerings (IPOs), examine the evolution of integer price clustering of IPOs in the aftermarket trading.

Consistent with Harris’s (1991) costly negotiation hypothesis, clustering on integer prices is a positive function of price level and various stock valuation uncertainty proxies, and it is a negative function of trading activities for IPOs and seasoned stocks.

It was found that, after controlling for price level, daily return volatility, number of trades, trading volume, number of market makers and the effect of price support, the integer price frequency of IPOs converge to that of seasoned stocks immediately, and whether IPOs have integer offer prices does not affect their integer price clustering in the aftermarket trading after the effect of price support is controlled for.

These results suggest that the IPO pricing process significantly reduce the differences between integer priced IPOs and non-integer priced IPOs in pre-offering valuation uncertainty.

This paper investigates the effects of the total abolition of all forms of agricultural subsidies to producers and border tariffs on the prices of staple cereals.

The authors use the GTAP global economy-wide model and focus on 27 countries and 8 regions. The GTAP database that is used contains information on budgetary transfers to producers and market price support such as domestic price support, tariffs, export subsidies, quotas on exports or imports and other border measures.

The removal of subsidies is estimated to significantly increase the prices of wheat and other cereal grains in Japan, paddy rice in Malaysia and Indonesia, processed rice in Malaysia and Indonesia and wheat in Brazil and India. When border tariffs are removed, cereal prices are projected to fall in several countries, but the decline is more pronounced for wheat in Kenya and Japan, other cereal grains in South Korea and all staples in Nepal.

The alternative scenarios on the removal of agricultural subsidies in all agricultural sectors and the elimination of border tariffs are purely speculative as the analysis ignores important political economy considerations of agricultural and food policy reforms.

The findings from this study point to the importance of implementing additional policy measures to mitigate the possible negative effect of repurposing the support to agriculture and ensure the food security and welfare of those categories of buyers who heavily depend on the price of staple food for their livelihoods.

This study’s findings confirm that the elimination of agricultural subsidies would impact global food security directly by making staple food less affordable to the poorest and indirectly by decreasing the available household budget for other presumably more nutritious food groups. Consequently, it is expected that these price increases could make segments of the world population poorer, particularly the net-food buyers due to a decline in their real income.

The authors assess the impact of removing the subsidies on the economy in a comprehensive way, particularly given the recent policy focus on net zero emissions and Sustainable Development Goals that include healthy foods. The authors also consider the counter effects of tariff reduction on this, which is price-reducing.

In recent years, prices for prime farmland have increased substantially, begging the question is the dramatic increase the result of a speculative bubble or consistent with market fundamentals with increases driven by increased global demand, low interest rates, and recent changes to US agricultural and energy policies. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impacts of recent agricultural support policies and ethanol policies on farmland values and rental rates.

Farm-level Agricultural Resource Management Survey data collected by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) between 1998 and 2008 as well as county-level data collected by the USDA, US Census Bureau, and Bureau of Economic Analysis are used to determine the impacts of recent agricultural support policies and ethanol policies on farmland values and rental rates, while controlling for parcel characteristics and urban pressure. Specifically, weighted ordinary least squares and two-stage least squares are used to investigate the impact of various governmental agricultural support policies, corn ethanol facilities location, and local corn ethanol production capacity on farmland values and rental rates.

The results indicate that government payments, urban pressure, and the proximity of the parcel to an ethanol facility have a positive impact on both farmland values and rental rates. More specifically, parcels located in the same county as at least one corn ethanol facility are more valuable and command higher rental rates. In addition, county-level ethanol production capacity is positively associated with farmland values and rental rates. An inverse relationship between distance of the parcels from an ethanol facility and farmland values is also found; a similar result is found for rental rates.

The findings suggest that agricultural support payments and ethanol policies are capitalized into farmland values. These findings have important implications for the formulation of future farm policy. A limitation of the analyses is that farmland values are estimated by landowners; future research could utilize farmland transaction data to overcome potential biases generated by using landowner estimates. In addition, while our study period covers 11 years, future research could expand the time period further to analyze the effect of more recent agricultural and ethanol policies.

This paper extends prior research pertaining to factors influencing farmland values and rental rates by also examining the proximity of the parcel to an operating ethanol facility using a unique data set.

The paper aims to test seven marketing‐orientated factors that have the potential to discriminate between the setting of successful high and low prices. The significant factors are then applied by means of a decision support model that can be used by managers to aid their price decision‐making.

Following exploratory research, a mail survey was conducted using a questionnaire based on the dual scenario technique.

Six marketing‐orientated factors – i.e. ability of customers to pay, brand value, degree of competition, price acting as a barrier to entry, demand compared to supply, and the use of a building market share objective – significantly discriminated between the use of successful high versus low price strategies. Using these variables, a highly statistically significant model was developed based on discriminant analysis.

The sample excludes services and is based on responses from managers. Cost‐orientated factors were excluded from investigation to provide focus. The study demonstrates the potential for using the dual scenario technique in survey research, provides measures for seven constructs and highlights the dangers of using reverse‐polarity items to measure constructs.

The decision support model can be used by managers to aid their price decision‐making. The significant factors can also be helpful in market segmentation and targeting analysis.

The study supports a marketing‐orientated theory of price determination based on market, customer and competitor factors. It is the first to provide a systematic and cogent analysis of marketing‐orientated variables that have the potential to affect the high versus low pricing decision. By applying these variables in a decision support model, marketers have access to a tool that can aid their marketing decision‐making.

Over the past 25 years, direct cash transfers (often abbreviated as direct benefit transfer, DBT) to the poorer section of the society are gaining popularity over explicit subsidization of prices of essential commodities. One of the main arguments in favor of DBT is that it will cost the government less money and yet, the consumer benefit will be high. This paper aims to examine the proposition critically. Removal of price support exposes the consumers to market risk, and any income support programme must compensate the consumers accordingly.

The authors use a theoretical study where the model of a representative consumer under different specification of preferences is used to compare programme costs under price stabilization and income support programmes.

What the authors show in the paper that the comparative cost of the programmes crucially depends on the nature of preferences, as well as the good under question. For certain specifications of the indirect utility function and the marginal utility of money, one programme may cost less than the other. Any policymaker must take account of such nuances before making a blanket prescription.

The main limitation is that only a representative consumer is taken.

The specification of indirect utility function plays a decisive role in deciding, which one these two policies, DBT or stabilizing price at a fixed level.

The main novelty of the paper is in the different specifications of the indirect utility function considered in the paper.

This paper examines whether farmers' knowledge of the minimum support prices (MSPs) affects farm-gate prices. MSP is the minimum guaranteed price for agricultural commodities announced by the Government of India for 24 commodities. Most farmers in India prefer to sell their produce at the farm-gate due to a small marketable surplus and hence do not directly benefit from MSP. The authors test the common argument in the political discourse that if farmers have knowledge of MSP, then they can bargain with traders during the farm-gate transaction and demand a better price close to MSP.

The authors use matching methods to examine the impact of knowledge of MSP on farm-gate prices.

Using nationally representative data, the authors show that there is no empirical evidence that the knowledge of MSP of the crops leads to higher bargaining power and better farm-gate prices.

Price information (MSP in this case) alone cannot improve the bargaining power of farmers and result in a better price realization. As a safety net, MSP fails in the absence of procurement of products by the government. This also raises the question of the equitability of the price support system in India and calls for a rethink of the MSP policy.

This study is the first of its kind to examine the anchoring effect of knowledge of MSP on farm-gate prices using a nationally representative dataset.