Anthony N. Rezitis

An Examination of Okun's Law: Evidence from Regional Areas in Greece

This paper estimates Okuns coefficient for certain regional areas in Greece over the period 1960–1997. Through the Hodrick-Prescott filtering and the band-pass filtering the empirical analysis shows that that the coefficients do not exhibit substantial interregional differences, except for the cases of Epirus and North Aegean Islands. In these two cases, the estimates are larger than the regional average under both detrending methodologies. The empirical findings also show that Okuns relationship undergoes a structural change in 1981. After this break, unemployment becomes less responsive to output changes in all regional areas.

Investigation of Factors Influencing the Technical Efficiency of Agricultural Producers Participating in Farm Credit Programs: The Case of Greece

This study investigates a number of factors influencing technical efficiency of Greek farms participating in the 1994 European Union (EU) farm credit program. Technical efficiency measures are obtained within the framework of a parametric stochastic frontier. Factors showing a positive effect on technical efficiency are value of liabilities, number of hours of mechanical operation, large land size, and rental land, whereas those showing a negative effect are value of EU product subsidies, value of off-farm family income, and hired labor. The value of investments incurred by farms because of their participation in the 1994 farm credit program does not show any significant effect on technical efficiency. The predicted levels of technical efficiency indicate that the average technical efficiency of farms 3 years after participating in the 1994 farm credit program is lower than the average technical efficiency of the same farms the year before participating in the program. Thus, the program has failed to increase the efficiency of farms.

Measuring Technical Efficiency in the Greek Agricultural Sector

This paper measures the degree of technical efficiency of Greek farms at discrete points in time. Stochastic frontier production functions are estimated from four annual Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN) surveys of the 1992–1995 period. From the results, a measure of technical efficiency is calculated for each farm for each year. The four distributions of technical efficiency values are examined and compared. All four samples show a wide range of farm-specific technical efficiency but efficiency is improving over the period. The paper also presents frontier estimates for small and large farms classified according to economic size. In that case, technical efficiency measures are calculated and their distributions are examined and compared. The results show that large farms are more efficient than small farms. However, efficiency is improving in both size farms over the period. In general, the results of this study indicate that there is substantial scope for improving technical efficiency of Greek farms.

Food Price Volatility and Macroeconomic Factors: Evidence from GARCH and GARCH-X Estimates

This article examines food price volatility in Greece and how it is affected by short-run deviations between food prices and macroeconomic factors. The methodology follows the GARCH and GARCH-X models. The results show that there exists a positive effect between the deviations and food price volatility. The results are highly important for producers and consumers because higher volatility augments the uncertainty in the food markets. Once the participants receive a signal that the food market is volatile, this might lead them to ask for increased government intervention in the allocation of investment resources and this could reduce overall welfare.

Housing prices and macroeconomic factors in Greece: prospects within the EMU

This article analyses the dynamic effects of specific macroeconomic variables, for example housing loan rates, inflation, employment and money supply, on the price of new houses sold in Greece. An error correction vector autoregressive (ECVAR) model is used in modelling the impact of the above macroeconomic variables on housing price. The results obtained through impulse response functions suggest that housing prices respond to all macroeconomic variables under consideration. Variance decompositions show that the housing loan rate is the variable with the highest explanatory power over the variation of housing price, followed by inflation and employment, while money supply does not seem to show any substantial impact.

Agricultural Productivity and Convergence: Europe and the United States

This article applies the Window Malmquist Index (WMI) approach to measure changes in agricultural Total Factor Productivity (TFP) for the United States and a sample of nine European countries for the period 1973 to 1993. The dataset used in this article is obtained from Ball et al. (2001). The WMI is constructed by combining Data Envelopment Analysis, window analysis with the Malmquist index approach. Furthermore, the ‘Kruskal and Wallis rank test’ is used for testing frontier shifts among observed periods. The article also explores the question of convergence in TFP across the countries under consideration, by testing for β- and σ-convergence, as well as for stochastic or long-run convergence. The results show wide variation in the rate of TFP growth across countries with an average trend growth rate of 1.62%. The results indicate the presence of β-convergence but the absence of σ-convergence for the full period under consideration but the presence of both β- and σ-convergence for the sub-period 1983 to 1993. Finally, a wide spectrum of panel unit root test results support the presence of long-run convergence among the sample countries.

Mean and Volatility Spillover Effects in Greek Producer-Consumer Meat Prices

This study investigates causality, price transmission and volatility spillover effects between producer and consumer prices in lamb, beef, pork and poultry markets in Greece, using the methodology of the Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedastic (GARCH) approach. The empirical findings indicate significant price effects in the markets under consideration.

Modeling Pork Supply Response and Price Volatility: The Case of Greece

This paper examines the supply response of the Greek pork market. A GARCH process is used to estimate expected price and price volatility, while price and supply equations are estimated jointly. In addition to the standard GARCH model, several different symmetric, asymmetric, and nonlinear GARCH models are estimated. The empirical results indicate that among the estimated GARCH models, the quadratic NAGARCH model seems to better describe producers’ price volatility, which was found to be an important risk factor of the supply response function of the Greek pork market. Furthermore, the empirical findings show that feed price is an important cost factor of the supply response function and that high uncertainty restricts the expansion of the Greek pork sector. Finally, the model provides forecasts for quantity supplied, producers’ price, and price volatility.

Agricultural productivity convergence across Europe and the United States of America

This paper applies time series techniques to test for convergence in agricultural total factor productivity among the USA and a sample of nine European countries for the period 1973–1993. The data set used in this paper obtained from Ball et al. (2001). The wide spectrum of unit root test results obtained in the present study support the presence of convergence among the sample countries.

Food price volatility and macroeconomic factor volatility: 'heat waves' or 'meteor showers'?

This paper investigates volatility spillover effects between relative food prices and explicit macroeconomic fundamentals, i.e. exchange rates, money balances, inflation, and the deficit to income ratio, through the methodology of GARCH models. The findings showed that significant and positive macroeconomic volatility effects influence the volatility of relative food prices. Moreover, the volatility of relative food prices exerts a positive and statistically significant impact on its own volatility. The results imply that the participation of Greece in EMU will diminish the volatility of those macroeconomic factors, implying lower volatility in food prices and thus higher benefits for both producers and consumers.