Chinkook Lee

Growth and Structural Change in U.S. Food and Fiber Industries: An Input-Output Perspective

We analyze growth and structural change of the food and fiber industries in the U.S. economy, 1972–82. Growth and structural changes are examined in terms of how changes in a sectors output can be apportioned between changes in (1) domestic final demand, (2) export demand, (3) interindustry demand, and (4) domestic supply ratios. Results indicate that growth of U.S. agricultural sectors is nearly equally dependent upon exports and domestic demand, while growth of processed food and nonfood agricultural processing sectors is heavily dependent on domestic demand.

Effect of Trade on the Demand for Skilled and Unskilled Workers

We use an input-output model to examine the effects of trade and domestic consumption, technology and labor productivity on skilled and unskilled worker demand. We found that trade was not the major contributor to changes in demand for skilled and unskilled labor during 1972-92, counter to the continuing debate on the trade-widening wage gap linkage. We found that skill intensity, i.e. the ratio of high-skilled to low-skilled workers for exports compared with imports, exceeded one during 1972-92, but did not increase. We explore alternative definitions of skilled and unskilled, and find our results to be robust to these alternative definitions.

Growth and Changes in the Structure of the US Agricultural Economy, 1972–82: an Input–Output Perspective

This paper analyses the growth and structural change of the agricultural sectors in the US economy. Growth and structural changes are examined from the perspective of how increases of output of agricultural sectors can be apportioned between: (1) the effect of growth and structural changes in domestic final demand and exports; (2) changes in the domestic supply ratios of sector output; and (3) interdependencies between industries. The paper also examines what are the most important interdependencies between industries and how much they have changed. The analysis of structural changes relates to the growth of the economy in quite different circumstances of the 1970s and the 1980s.

Minimum Wage And Food Prices: An Analysis Of Price Pass-Through Effects

An Input-Output model is used to analyze price pass-through effects of a minimum wage increase on prices of the food and kindred product and food-service industry. Although these sectors employ a disproportionate share of minimum wage workers, our results suggest a

Income and employment generation in the food and fiber system

0.50 increase in the minimum wage would minimally affect food prices.

Information Technology for the Food Manufacturing Industry

In the spirit of the classic Davis-Goldberg study of agribusiness, a procedure is presented for estimating and estimates of employment and income originating in the US Food and Fiber System. The Food and Fiber System is on net a nearly wholly domestic based subsystem of the economy accounting for employment for 18.5% of the civilian workforce and a source for 18% of total gross national product.

Is There a Link between the Changing Skills of Labor Used in U.S. Processed Food Trade and Rural Employment

Abstract The direct and indirect use of information technology (IT) as an intermediate input in the U.S. food system is empirically examined to provide insight into how Information Technology has affected the production processes of the U.S. Food Manufacturing Industry (FMI) over time. The benchmark U.S. Input-Output tables for 1972, 1982, 1992, and 1997 are used to assess how changes in IT use by FMI as an intermediate, business-to-business (B2B) input affected supporting output needed to meet final demands by Consumers (B2C), by Government (B2G), and by Export (B2E). Becausefrom a demand perspectiveeating and drinking places (E&D) are closely related to the FMI, they are also included in this analysis. For the period considered (1972-1997 and projected year, 2000): (1) IT use as an intermediate input was small from 1972 to 1992, but began to increase substantially between 1992 and 1997; (2) the IT input demand by the FMI reduced inventories of agricultural and processed food; (3) the IT input demand did not substantially reduce fulltime equivalent labor demand per unit of output over time; and (4) measured IT use was greater when computer equipment investments in capital investment were endogenized into the production process. Although early in the history of IT, these findings should give some insight into how IT may influence future production processes of the FMI.

Demand-Driven Structural Changes in the U.S. Agribusiness Industry, 1972-1987:

Between the 1970s and the 1990s, processed food exports switched from using more skilled labor per unit of output than imports to the opposite. Processed food trade also expanded during this period. More meat and poultry products in processed food trade could explain this switch in skill intensity. Growing meat trade paralleled an urban-to-rural shift in meat processing. Although this could have been a win-win situation for rural areas, many of the jobs related to expanded meat trade benefited commuter and migrant workers because late-1990s jobs slaughtering livestock and processing meat did not appeal to domestic rural workers.

An analysis of North Korea’s economic development with special reference to agriculture

Output growth of the U.S. agribusiness industry is examined to apportion first the importance of domestic final demand. Growth of U.S. food procesing output is heavily dependent upon domestic final demand and particularly its personal consumption expenditures component.

The Impact of Minimum Wage Increases on Food and Kindred Products Prices: An Analysis of Price Pass-Through

The article examines North Korea’s record of economic development with special reference to agriculture. There has been some success in grain production using a centrally directed economy and the Juche method and Chungsan-ri spirit of farming. However, too much emphasis on grain production has resulted in shortages of other agricultural products, such as livestock and livestock products. A fundamental problem in North Korea is that the economy as a whole is supply-constrained, a common failing of planned economies.