Sebastien Pouliot

Import sensitive products and perverse tariff-rate quota liberalization

This paper shows that a Tariff-Rate-Quotas (TRQ) minimum access expansion can perversely trigger domestic price increases. Often, TRQs have prohibitive over-quota tariffs to mimic import-quotas, in providing minimum market access. In the WTOs Doha Round, it is likely that countries using TRQs will avoid aggressive tariff reductions if they increase the quota portion of TRQs. We show that when the import price lies between the unit cost of production and the price received by domestic upstream firms, an increase in import quota as a share of domestic production may cause an increase in the domestic retail price.

Market Evidence of Packer Willingness to Pay for Traceability

This article measures the willingness to pay for the traceability of steers. I use data on the price of steers in Quebec and Ontario to identify a demand shifter in a hedonic framework. I estimate error correction models to provide the first market-based econometric estimates of the willingness to pay for traceability. My best assessment is that a premium between C

Development of a Cost-Effectiveness Analysis of Leafy Green Marketing Agreement Irrigation Water Provisions

0.02 and C

On the Number of Bidders and Auction Performance: when More Means Less

0.05 per pound of carcass (between 1.2% and 3.1%) is paid for traceable steers.

Traceability, recalls, industry reputation and product safety

An analysis of the effectiveness of meeting the irrigation water provisions of the Leafy Green Marketing Agreement (LGMA) relative to its costs provides an approach to evaluating the cost-effectiveness of good agricultural practices that uses available data. A case example for lettuce is used to evaluate data requirements and provide a methodological example to determine the cost-effectiveness of the LGMA water quality provision. Both cost and field data on pathogen or indicator bacterial levels are difficult and expensive to obtain prospectively. Therefore, methods to use existing field and experimental data are required. Based on data from current literature and experimental studies, we calculate a cost-efficiency ratio that expresses the reduction in E. coli concentration per dollar expenditure on testing of irrigation water. With appropriate data, the same type of analysis can be extended to soil amendments and other practices and to evaluation of public benefits of practices used in production. Careful use of existing and experimental data can lead to evaluation of an expanded set of practices.

Price It and They Will Buy: How E85 Can Break the Blend Wall

We first show in the context of sequential multi-unit auctions under complete information that a seller’s revenue may increase or decrease as the number of buyers increases, even when the additional bidders win an object. We use data from the Quebec daily hog auction to empirically analyze the effect of invitations extended to bidders from Ontario. Our estimation accounts for the endogenous timing of these rare invitations, but we nevertheless uncover a negative “invitation” effect. We attribute this anti-competitive effect to the fact that the addition of bidders increases competition in late rounds, but not necessarily in early ones.