We estimated the impact of the Indian tariff on the demand for imported fresh apples from theUnited States. A 1% decrease in the tariff would increase the quantities demanded by 3.83%. If India eliminates the tariff on all imported fresh apples, total consumer welfare in terms of the imported fresh apple market will increase by $120 million yearly, 57% of the value of all fresh apples imported by India in 2015. This study adds evidence on the effects of tariff reduction on trade volume and welfare of consumers in the importing country.

The construction of the rail network in Spain was supported by public aid. A part of them were “subvenciones adicionales”, which came from the exemption of the payment of customs duties on the imports of railway equipment. The exact amount of these grants is only known after 1870 when they were rather small. In this paper, we quantified them for the period 1857-1886 in the company MZA, by then the largest in the country. Moreover, we estimate the costs of the construction of the railway lines of that company until 1869 and how much did each of the sources of funding, public and private contributed. The main conclusion is that in MZA the State’s grants were higher than the shareholders’ investment.

The first-difference version of a source-differentiated almost ideal demand system is used to estimate demand for Ivorian rice imports. The results indicate that Thailand will benefit most from an expansion of imports of luxury rice and broken rice products. Vietnam will gain from growth in the market for standard rice. The results also suggest that adoption of a new 35 percent tariff policy to protect the domestic industry will not be enough to improve social welfare in Côte d'Ivoire in spite of increased production value.

Agricultural sales cooperative unions (ASCUs) in Turkey are heavily influenced by both domestic and international government policies. Both export taxes and import tariffs are used as policy tools to regulate cotton markets. Domestic price support programs, water subsidies, fertilizer subsidies, and credit subsidies have also been used as domestic policy tools. These types of subsidies are not uncommon among developing countries. This paper provides empirical estimates of the degree of economic inefficiency associated with government intervention in Turkish cotton markets. A two-region partial equilibrium model of cotton exports and imports is developed under the “small country assumption” to obtain empirical estimates of the deadweight welfare loss associated with these government subsidies. Although government intervention results in significant income distribution among the various cotton sectors within Turkey, the overall economic inefficiency of the redistribution is very low.

Rapidly declining gasoline prices from their record high during the summer of 2008, while ethanol prices remained relatively high, made it difficult for many bio-fuel policy modelers to fully explain the impacts of U.S. bio-fuel policies on fuel prices. Using profit-maximization models for blenders, refiners, and distillers, we conduct a comparative static analysis to measure the relative magnitudes of the impacts of tax credits and blending mandates on fuel-energy market equilibrium prices. Our results indicate that first, the prices of all fuels including conventional gasoline, ethanol, and blended gasoline decline as the biofuel tax credit increases, but they increase as the rate of the blending mandate increases. Second, the shadow value of a blending mandate represents the marginal rate of substitution between the marginal price change associated with a blending mandate and the marginal price change associated with a bio-fuel tax credit. Therefore, bio-fuel policies can affect the prices of all fuels including conventional gasoline, ethanol, and blended gasoline. Finally, ethanol imports are affected by domestic blender's market-power effects, more than by the import duty imposed to offset the tax credit associated with the use of imported ethanol in the blending process.