Call for Applications: AJAE Editorship Applications

Editorship appointments for the American Journal of Agricultural Economics are staggered such that two new appointments are made every two years. The AAEA Board now seeks applications for two editors to be appointed for a four-year term, beginning in January 2020. Each editor handles approximately one-fourth of the submitted manuscripts and makes independent editorial decisions on these submissions. The degree to which candidate’s expertise complements that of the continuing editors, Tim Richards and Terry Hurley, will be considered in the selection process.

In addition, editors share the administrative responsibilities of managing the AJAE. Each editor should plan to dedicate 25 to 40 percent of his/her time to AJAE editorial duties. AAEA will provide financial assistance to defray some portion of the editors’ time and most expenses.

Transition Timing
The AAEA Board will make final selections by early 2019. The new editors should be prepared to begin the transition process at the 2019 AAEA Annual Meeting in Atlanta, July 21-23, 2019 and expect to be fully engaged in editorial duties by January 1, 2020. Interested candidates can consult the journal website for information on the journal at www.ajae.oxfordjournals.org/. Please note that all editors need to maintain their AAEA membership throughout their service to the journal.

Applications
Applications should include:

• a brief statement expressing interest which should include applicant’s areas of expertise and editorial philosophy for the AJAE,
• curriculum vitae (including descriptions of previous editorial work),
• statements of administrative support from the candidate’s department chair, dean or other appropriate administrative officer.

Applications should be sent electronically via PDF to Kristen McGuire, Executive Director, at kmcguire@aaea.org by November 30, 2018. Nominations of potentially interested candidates who can then be solicited for their materials are also welcome.

Read the call on AAEAs website: https://www.aaea.org/publications/ajae/call-for-ajae-editor

AAEA Publications now Current on RePEc

AAEA is pleased to announce that the AAEA publications are now up-to-date on RePEc (Research Papers in Economics). RePEc is a collaborative effort of hundreds of volunteers in 84 countries to enhance the dissemination of research in Economics and related sciences. The heart of the project is a decentralized bibliographic database of working papers, journal articles, books, books chapters and software components, all maintained by volunteers. The collected data are then used in various services that serve the collected metadata to users or enhance it.

RePEc has become an important metric of research output and contributions in economics. The service is particularly important in its tracking of citations and other metrics of academic output such as page counts. It has also become an important repository for research, including working papers and reporting on research in progress.

Until recently, AAEA content was not getting uploaded to RePEc and the archives of AJAE were not available on the site. This was due in part to a technical issue with the way data was transferred between AAEA’s publisher, Oxford University Press (OUP). Through the diligent work of the AAEA Executive Board, technical staff at OUP, and technical staff at RePEc, the data issue was corrected and content is now available for AJAE and AEPP. We are grateful to the significant effort that our partners at OUP put into achieving this important recognition for our membership. We owe a special thanks to Byron Bonparth for his efforts.

AJAE: Free Virtual Issue on Energy

In this virtual edition of the American Journal of Agricultural Economics we highlight the recent research on emerging sources of energy, including biofuels, natural gas and wind and their economic and environmental implications. While these are potentially low carbon sources of energy that can contribute to energy security for the US, their production has led to controversies about their economic and environmental impacts and the trade-offs they generate between food and fuel production, energy security and environmental quality. This virtual issue includes both papers that provide original estimates and reviews of existing evidence on these topics. These papers show the extent to which the expansion of biofuels has led to an integration of agricultural and energy markets and its implications for the link between energy prices, agricultural commodity prices and land values. They provide evidence of the positive and negative environmental impact of these alternative energy sources and ways to monetize these effects. They highlight the challenges for policies seeking to induce a shift in demand to low carbon energy sources and provide empirical estimates of the energy and carbon prices needed to induce production. This issue illustrates the significant role for economic analysis in drawing attention to the societal implications of emerging technologies and in designing policies to reduce unintended consequences.

Madhu Khanna
Editor

• Long-run and Short-run Co-movements in Energy Prices and the Prices of Agricultural Feedstocks for Biofuel
  Robert J. Myers, Stanley R. Johnson, Michael Helmar and Harry Baumes

• Is the Shale Energy Boom a Bust for Nearby Residents? Evidence from Housing Values in Pennsylvania
  Sathya Gopalakrishnan and H. Allen Klaiber 

• Economic, Energy Security, and Greenhouse Gas Effects of Biofuels: Implications for Policy
  Madhu Khanna and Xiaoguang Chen
   
• Wind versus Nuclear Options for Generating Electricity in a Carbon-Constrained World: Strategizing in an Energy-Rich Economy
  G. Cornelis van Kooten, Craig Johnston and Linda Wong
   
• The Impact of Biofuels on Commodity Food Prices: Assessment of Findings
  David Zilberman, Gal Hochman, Deepak Rajagopal, Steve Sexton and Govinda Timilsina
   
• Vegetable Spirits and Energy Policy
  Charles Towe and Constant I. Tra
   
• Supply of Cellulosic Biofuel Feedstocks and Regional Production Pattern
  Madhu Khanna, Xiaoguang Chen, Haixiao Huang and Hayri Önal
  

The Exchange - Released Today

 Meet AAEA 2015 Fellow: C. Peter Timmer

AAEA News

• Housing and Registration is Open: 2015 AAEA & WAEA Joint Annual Meeting
• 2015 AAEA & WAEA Joint Annual Meeting: Abstract Decision
• Call for submissions: 2016 ASSA Annual Meeting
• 2015 AAEA & WAEA Joint Annual Meeting Post-Conference Workshop
• 2015 Extension Competition for Graduate Students
• Under Graduate Student Section Activities Announcement
• San Francisco On Demand
• Call for Selected Poster Reviewers
• Renew Your AAEA Membership for 2015
• Call for Participation: 2015 Agricultural & Applied Economics Association AEM/ Graduate Student Section Case Study Competition
• Extension Tour: Sonoma County Wine, Apple Cider, and Olive Oil
• Register for the 2015 Employment Center
• International Section: Announcement of Track Sessions
• International Section Track Session: Economics of Food Losses and Waste: What are the right questions?
• Agricultural Finance and Management (AFM) Section Track Sessions

Other News

• International Agricultural Risk, Finance, and Insurance Conference (IARFIC)
• Crop Insurance and the 2014 Farm Bill: Reports and Analyses from the Field
• AJAE Virtual Issue

Upcoming Deadlines

Call for submissions: 2016 ASSA Annual Meeting

President-Elect Jill McCluskey is soliciting proposals and suggestions for AAEA invited paper sessions at the 2016 Allied Social Sciences Association (ASSA) Annual Meeting in San Francisco, CA, January, 3-5, 2016. Preference will be given to those proposals that add to knowledge on public issues of national and international importance or expand capabilities and tools for economic research.

The objective of AAEA sessions at the ASSA Annual Meeting is to share new knowledge with members of other economics associations as well as with AAEA members. Sessions may be jointly sponsored with other ASSA member associations. AAEA encourages sessions that will draw widely from ASSA attendees. Therefore, preference will be given to proposals that jointly serve the interests of the AAEA and other economists more broadly.

Papers in these Invited Paper sessions will be considered for publication in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics in August 2016. Preference will be given to proposals that reflect a commitment to furnish a high-quality collection of papers suitable for publication.  Papers will go through a review process, and it is not guaranteed that all papers in an accepted session will be published. Papers submitted for review should be in their publish-ready state because there will not be time for multiple versions and reviews. Discussant comments will not be published. Authors will be contacted by the AJAE editors regarding style and length of manuscripts to be submitted to the editors for publication consideration.

Proposed session formats with three papers and one discussant or four papers without a discussant are permitted. Proposals for sessions without a discussant must include a clear plan for ensuring and fostering participant interaction. Please note that sessions at ASSA are two hours in length.

Proposals will be reviewed and selected by a subcommittee of the AAEA Board.

Proposals should be submitted to Kristen Wright at kwright@aaea.org. They should include the proposed session title and paper titles, as well as the names, addresses, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses of the session organizer, moderator, paper presenters, and discussants. A brief (approximately two pages) justification of the session, and one paragraph abstract describing the objective of, and new knowledge generated by, each paper, should also be included. It is the responsibility of the organizer to ensure that all individuals identified in the proposal are willing to participate.

All presenters/speakers/discussants must be members of AAEA. A membership waiver request can be included in the proposal in the case of extenuating circumstances. In addition, participants need to register for the ASSA meeting. AAEA cannot grant registration waivers for the meeting.

Please send proposals by May 1, 2015, in Word or PDF format to Kristen Wright at kwright@aaea.org.

OUP via AJAE releases Virtual Issue: Domestic Rural Economic Development

AJAE Editor’s Note:

In this virtual edition of the American Journal of Agricultural Economics we highlight the long and rich tradition on research and policy discussions related to rural community development in AJAE. This was an undertaking of the Community and Regional Economics Network (CRENET) within the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association. In addition to a celebration of this long and rich tradition we had three objectives in organizing this virtual issue. First, we wanted to highlight some of the classic pieces in rural development that remain relevant today. Reviewing these older classics helps us to better understand not only the foundations of our work today but also highlights has our thinking has evolved over time. Second, we aimed to emphasize the importance of direct policy relevance to the work. While some of the pieces included here could be considered “theoretical” most of the work attempts to inform policy discussions at the federal, state and local levels. Third, over time the complexity of rural community development becomes clearer. Notions that a healthy farm economy lead to a healthy rural economy gave way to a better understanding of the heterogeneity of rural areas. Given this heterogeneity some questioned what role federal policy could or should play and if policy be aimed at nurturing grassroots efforts. As the complexity of rural community development became clearer the nature of the work equally evolved over time.
Steven C. Deller
Editor

See all articles part of this issue HERE

OUP Blog: Are migrant farm workers disappearing?

Migrant farm workers.
Image by Jeffrey M. Perloff.
via OUP Blog

 By Maoyong Fan, Susan Gabbard, Anita Alves Pena, and Jeffrey M. Perloff
February 26^th 2015 on Oxford University Press's Blog 

Migrant farmworkers plant and pick most of the fruits and vegetables that you eat. Seasonal crop farmers, who employ workers only a few weeks of the year, rely on workers who migrate from one job to another. However, farmers’ ability to rely on migrants to fill their seasonal labor needs is in danger.

From 1989 through 1988, roughly half of all seasonal crop farmworkers migrated: traveled at least 75 miles for a U.S. job. Since then, the share of workers who migrate has dropped by more than in half, hitting 18% in 2012. Because of this drop in the number of migrants, farmers are increasingly struggling to find workers to pick     their crops before they spoil.... Read full blog post on OUP

AJAE Editorial Announcement

The American Journal of Agricultural Economics provides a forum for creative and scholarly work on the economics of agriculture and food, natural resources and the environment, and rural and community development throughout the world. In 2014, AAEA collected applications for two editorial positions and after much thought and consideration, the new editors were selected.

Congratulations to Timothy Beatty from University of California, Davis and Travis Lybbert, from University of California, Davis, who have been named the new Editors of the AJAE. They will begin their work in August 2015. AAEA would like to welcome Timothy and Travis to the editorial team.

AAEA would also like to congratulate and thank Brian Roe from Ohio State University and Madhu Khanna from University of Illinois – Urbana for their exceptional editorial service for AJAE. Both served from 2011–2015 working on volumes 95-98. They will complete their term for AJAE on December, 2015.