This article examines the impact of catastrophic hurricane events on income distribution in hurricane states in the United States. Media claims have been made and the perception created that the most damaging impact of hurricanes is on the lowest income population in the affected states. If these claims are true, they may have serious implications for the insurance industry and government policy makers. We develop a panel data, fixed effects econometric model that includes hurricane-impacted states as cross-sections using annual data for a period of almost 100 years. The Gini coefficient is used as a measure of income inequality, and is a function of normalized hurricane economic damages, gross domestic product (GDP), a set of socioeconomic variables that serves as a control, time trend, and cross-sectional dummy variables. Findings indicate that for every 100 billion US dollars in hurricane economic damages there is an increase in income inequality by 5.4 % as measured by Gini coefficient. Political, sociodemographic, and economic variables are also significant. These include such variables as the political party controlling the U.S. Senate, the proportion of nonwhite population by state, and GDP. Time trend is a positive and significant variable, suggesting an increase in income inequality over time. There are significant differences among the states included in the study. Our results demonstrate that different segments of the population are differently impacted by hurricanes and suggest how that differential impact could be considered in future government policies and business decisions, particularly those made by the insurance industry.

We use structural vector autoregressions to analyse the dynamic effects of shocks to natural gas and nitrogenous fertiliser prices on three major cereal crops: maize, rice and wheat. We find that the response of cereal prices to natural gas and fertiliser price shocks has been relatively small, instantaneous and transitory. These findings suggest that crop prices may change rapidly in response to energy and fertiliser prices, even when there are no shifts in the underlying fundamentals in crop markets. Furthermore, because the effects of the shocks dissipate rather quickly, short‐term measures to address swings in food prices may suffice.

This article aims to evaluate a possible relation between increased Brazilian trade openness and increasing observed rates of overweight and obesity during the last 25 years. We develop an economic model where formal trade barriers are eliminated, and resulting sociocultural outcomes such as the adoption of westernized lifestyle in traditional non-western countries prevails, which could imply a health externality. In order to empirically analyse the influence of trade flows on overweight and obesity in Brazil, a balanced fixed-effects panel model has been estimated. Data for the 26 Brazilian states plus the Federal District are run for 1988/1989, 2002 and 2008. We found that an increase in trade openness leads to an increase in overweight and obesity ratios in Brazil. Hence results seem to point that there is a health externality in Brazil due to trade liberalization. However, more consistent evidence may be necessary to convince politicians and policymakers that any interference will be necessary to correct this externality.

This study is conducted (1) to examine the possible link between increased trade openness and technical efficiency in Brazilian agriculture and (2) to contribute to the scholarly debate in the literature by measuring the impact of trade openness on technical efficiency. The analysis is conducted by using the Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA) method. Our results indicate large and significant impact of capital, and lesser but significant impact of labour on sectorial output, while expanding farmland would not increase the output. The estimates of trade openness are not statistically significant, indicating that it does not impact technical efficiency. Trade liberalization as an underlying motive for increasing technical efficiency does not exist based on our results. The primary markets for Brazilian agricultural commodities are still the domestic markets, which are still relatively well protected from foreign competition. This implies that domestic producers are not forced to use existing inputs more efficiently given the relative lack of competition domestically and enlarged foreign markets expanding primarily in the booming and large Asian economies.