Patrick Canning

Optimal wholesale facilities location within the fruit and vegetables supply chain with bimodal transportation options: An LP-MIP heuristic approach

Population growth creates a challenge to food availability and access. To balance supply with growing demand, more food has to move from production to consumption sites. Moreover, demand for locally-grown food is increasing and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) seeks to develop and strengthen regional and local food systems. This article examines wholesale facility (hub) locations in food supply chain systems on a national scale to facilitate the efficient transfer of food from production regions to consumption locations. It designs an optimal national wholesale or hub location network to serve food consumption markets through efficient connections with production sites. The mathematical formulation is a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) problem that minimizes total network costs which include costs of transporting goods and locating facilities. A scenario study is used to examine the models sensitivity to parameter changes, including travel distance, hub capacity, transportation cost, etc. An application is made to the U.S. fruit and vegetable industry. We demonstrate how parameter changes affect the optimal locations and number of wholesale facilities.

A Flexible Modeling Framework to Estimate Interregional Trade Patterns and Input-Output Accounts

This study implements and tests a mathematical programming model to estimate interregional, interindustry transaction flows in a national system of economic regions based on an interregional accounting framework and initial information of interregional shipments. A national input-output (IO) table, regional data on gross output, value-added, exports, imports and final demand at sector level are used as inputs to generate an interregional IO account that reconciles regional economic statistics and interregional transaction data. The model is tested using data from a multi-regional global input-output database and shows remarkable capacity to discover true interregional trade patterns from highly distorted initial estimates.

MAXIMUM-LIKELIHOOD ESTIMATES OF A US MULTIREGIONAL HOUSEHOLD EXPENDITURE SYSTEM

This paper applies the maximum-likelihood equation to a model that produces US regional household expenditure estimates using national-level data on average expenditures by type of household and regional data on the number of households by type. Empirical results follow the analytical properties of the model and demonstrate an impressive capacity to recover regional statistics. These findings are useful in applied regional studies since they demonstrate a general framework to assess the input data and the overall estimation model.

Measuring Welfare Impacts from Equilibrium Supply and Demand Curves: An Antidumping Case Study

In this paper we present an applied welfare analysis in the tradition of Harberger that confronts the notable exceptions to the appropriate use of a single market measure for general equilibrium welfare analysis. We bring together the results of several elaborative studies on Harbergers 1971 essay and present some empirical remedies that address the notable exceptions to the appropriate use of estimates made in a single market. A case study involving a U.S. antidumping suit against Canadian exports of potash is presented. Copyright 1996, Oxford University Press.