IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aei/journl/y2015id841772.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

US biofuels policy, global food prices, and international trade obligations

Author

Listed:
  • Colin A. Carter
  • K. Aleks Schaefer

Abstract

The Renewable Fuels Standard created under the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act establishes minimum biofuels blending mandates in the United States. The regulation raises world food prices by diverting a substantial portion of US corn and soybeans away from global markets and into the production of ethanol and biodiesel. Despite these distortionary effects and opposition to the policy worldwide, the global community likely has no recourse to challenge this policy under existing international agreements. To make any meaningful reductions in government intervention in agriculture, trade negotiations must expand beyond trimming farm payments to curtail broader policy instruments that affect food prices.

Suggested Citation

  • Colin A. Carter & K. Aleks Schaefer, 2015. "US biofuels policy, global food prices, and international trade obligations," AEI Economic Perspectives, American Enterprise Institute, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:aei:journl:y:2015:id:841772
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.aei.org/publication/us-biofuels-policy-global-food-prices-and-international-trade-obligations
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Will Martin & Kym Anderson, 2012. "Export Restrictions and Price Insulation During Commodity Price Booms," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 94(2), pages 422-427.
    2. de Beer, Jeremy & Smyth, Stuart J., 2012. "International Trade in Biofuels: Legal and Regulatory Issues," Estey Centre Journal of International Law and Trade Policy, Estey Centre for Law and Economics in International Trade, vol. 13(1), pages 1-19, June.
    3. Michael J. Roberts & Wolfram Schlenker, 2013. "Identifying Supply and Demand Elasticities of Agricultural Commodities: Implications for the US Ethanol Mandate," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(6), pages 2265-2295, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Christiane Baumeister & Lutz Kilian, 2014. "Do oil price increases cause higher food prices? [Biofuels, binding constraints, and agricultural commodity price volatility]," Economic Policy, CEPR, CESifo, Sciences Po;CES;MSH, vol. 29(80), pages 691-747.
    2. Wenting Wang & Longbao Wei, 2021. "Impacts of agricultural price support policy on price variability and welfare: Evidence from China's soybean market," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 52(1), pages 3-17, January.
    3. Ahmed, Mansur & Goodwin, Barry, 2015. "Copula-Based Modeling of Dependence Structure among International Food Grain Markets," 2015 AAEA & WAEA Joint Annual Meeting, July 26-28, San Francisco, California 206059, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    4. Ivanic, Maros & Martin, Will, 2014. "Poverty impacts of the volume-based special safeguard mechanism," Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, vol. 58(4), October.
    5. Porteous, Obie, 2017. "Empirical effects of short-term export bans: The case of African maize," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 17-26.
    6. Christophe Gouel & Madhur Gautam & Will J. Martin, 2016. "Managing food price volatility in a large open country: the case of wheat in India," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 68(3), pages 811-835.
    7. Wenting Wang & Longbao Wei, 2019. "Impacts of Agricultural Price Support Policies on Price Variability and Welfare: Evidence from China's Soybean Market," Center for Agricultural and Rural Development (CARD) Publications 19-wp592, Center for Agricultural and Rural Development (CARD) at Iowa State University.
    8. Will Martin & Nicholas Minot, 2022. "The impacts of price insulation on world wheat markets during the 2022 food price crisis," Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, vol. 66(4), pages 753-774, October.
    9. Yusuke Matsuki, 2016. "A Distribution-Free Test of Monotonicity with an Application to Auctions," Working Papers e110, Tokyo Center for Economic Research.
    10. Nicolas Legrand, 2023. "War in Ukraine: The rational “wait‐and‐see” mode of global food markets," Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 45(2), pages 626-644, June.
    11. Kym Anderson & Maros Ivanic & William J. Martin, 2014. "Food Price Spikes, Price Insulation, and Poverty," NBER Chapters, in: The Economics of Food Price Volatility, pages 311-339, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Tangermann, Stefan, 2011. "Risk Management in Agriculture and the Future of the EU's Common Agricultural Policy," National Policies, Trade and Sustainable Development 320171, International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD).
    13. Kym Anderson & Anna Strutt, 2012. "Agriculture and Food Security in Asia by 2030," Macroeconomics Working Papers 23309, East Asian Bureau of Economic Research.
    14. Théo Benonnier & Katrin Millock & Vis Taraz, 2022. "Long-term migration trends and rising temperatures: the role of irrigation," Journal of Environmental Economics and Policy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 11(3), pages 307-330, July.
    15. Noel Perceval Assogba & Daowei Zhang, 2020. "An Economic Analysis of Tropical Forest Resource Conservation in a Protected Area," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(14), pages 1-12, July.
    16. Čermák, Michal & Ligocká, Marie, 2022. "Could Exist a Causality Between the Most Traded Commodities and Futures Commodity Prices in the Agricultural Market?," AGRIS on-line Papers in Economics and Informatics, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, Faculty of Economics and Management, vol. 14(4), December.
    17. Wolfram Schlenker, 2018. "Introduction to "Agricultural Productivity and Producer Behavior"," NBER Chapters, in: Agricultural Productivity and Producer Behavior, pages 1-9, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Paolo E. Giordani & Nadia Rocha & Michele Ruta, 2012. "Food Prices and the Multiplier Effect of Export Policy," CESifo Working Paper Series 3783, CESifo.
    19. Bernardina Algieri, 2014. "A roller coaster ride: an empirical investigation of the main drivers of the international wheat price," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 45(4), pages 459-475, July.
    20. Ivanic, Maros & Martin, Will & Zaman, Hassan, 2012. "Estimating the Short-Run Poverty Impacts of the 2010–11 Surge in Food Prices," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 40(11), pages 2302-2317.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    International trade; ethanol; farm bill; AEI Economic Perspectives; renewable energy; biofuel; food assistance;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • A - General Economics and Teaching

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aei:journl:y:2015:id:841772. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Dave Adams, CIO (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeiiius.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.