Attention to information plays a key role in recent macroeconomic analysis, yet measuring it is a challenging endeavor, most notably in terms of covering varying geographical levels and time frequencies. We propose a novel, unconventional measure of public attention, which addresses these limitations, based on individuals’ reports of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP). We document a surprising link between UAP sightings and macroeconomic conditions at the U.S.-county, state, and national levels. Controlling for weather conditions, and external influences, UAP sightings are more common in wealthier regions, but within regions the pattern is counter-cyclical. Thus, variations in attention to exceptional phenomena in the skies implicitly point at more general patterns of variations in the public attention. We further support this interpretation by a quasi-experimental design that utilizes plausibly exogenous regional variations in COVID-19 restrictions and find evidence for a causal effect on public attention. We further show that the UAP sightings measure is highly correlated with conventional measures of attention that are based on expectations data. We then apply our measure in the context of monetary policy transmission. We find that it can account for sizable regional heterogeneity in the response to monetary shocks. Higher levels of attention across U.S. regions, as well as within regions over the business cycle, substantially mitigate the effect of monetary policy.

This paper examines the decline in food expenditure after retirement by quantiles of the consumption distribution, by gender, and by pre-retirement employment status. The decline in food expenditure after retirement is smaller among those who were employees than among those who were self-employed, but only for females. Males who did not work did not experience a decline in food expenditure when they crossed the official retirement age, while females who did not work decreased their food expenditure in parts of the consumption distribution. These results are consistent with the two common explanations of the decline in consumption after retirement: inadequate savings and substitution of time for money. Public policy should target the inadequate savings phenomenon in order to make food consumption more sustainable during retirement.

This article analyzes Israel’s food security in comparison to other developed countries, using multiple indicators divided into four sections: food availability, food affordability, food quality and safety, and natural resources and resilience. Overall, the state of food security in Israel is better than in most countries, but the threats to food security arising from the triple risk of climate change, international conflicts, and disruptions in global supply chains, require better preparation for the future. Israel’s population growth and the slowdown in the growth rate of its agricultural production, as well as the short-term political desire to reduce prices, are leading the country to increasingly rely on food imports. Such imports expose Israel to even greater global risks, and require the formulation of a risk-management strategy that will balance local production and imports. The global triple risk to food security is currently exacerbated for Israel by the risk of shortage of labor due to the security situation, making this risk-management strategy even more necessary. This calls for the establishment of a governmental authority to oversee the formulation of a long-term food-security strategy, to break it down into feasible objectives and policy measures, and to supervise their implementation. Most importantly, in order to maintain and perhaps even enhance the productive capacity of the agricultural sector, the government must reinstall trust between farmers and the state by establishing a stable long-term policy environment.

Does the discovery and operation of a nearby giant oil field carry long-term health consequences? Capitalizing on the 2011Ð2018 waves of the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study, we find that a giant oil discovery occurring within a 60-km radius significantly decreases the relative average long-term health conditions of individuals born after it. Specifically, the average share of individuals diagnosed with a chronic disease in these areas increases, in relative terms, by 22%. This effect is observed most notably in diseases related to the respiratory, digestive, and urinary systems and may be driven by changes in the consumption habits of alcohol and tobacco.

This article examines the importance of landholdings in explaining income inequality among family farms in four districts in Georgia following the land reform of the 1990s. Income inequality is decomposed by sources of income and by determinants of income. The results indicate that farm income is a disequalizing source of income among family farms in these districts. In addition, a uniform increase in landholding is expected to reduce income inequality. Combining the two results, we conclude that the impact of land reform on farm household income inequality depends on the resulting distribution of landholdings. It can reduce inequality if land is distributed relatively equally, but inequality can increase if the wealthier farmers are able to gain control of more (and perhaps better) land resources. A possible implication of this result is that for land reform to be equalizing, distributing land to smallholders should be accompanied by additional policies and regulations supporting small farmers, such as land titling and registration, support for cooperation, and access to credit and other market services.

We propose a model that simulates climate change impacts on crop production and food prices under partial equilibrium. Our model incorporates a system of Laspeyres price and quantity indices that link structurally estimated community-level produce supply functions to market level demand functions. The supply estimation accounts for corner solutions associated with disaggregate land use observations and is constrained to reproduce aggregate supply data. We use the model to assess climate change impacts in Israel, which protects local agriculture by import tariffs and quotas. The simulation results vary greatly when we allow prices to change as a response to supply changes, highlighting the importance of endogenizing prices in climate change simulations. The results imply that climate changes projected for Israel are expected to be beneficial to farmers, particularly due to the positive impact of the forecasted large temperature rise on field crop production. Fruit outputs are projected to decline, and reduce consumer surplus, but to a lower extent than the increase in total agricultural profits. Nearly 20% of the profit rise is attributed to farmers’ adaptation through land reallocation. Adaptation to the projected reduction in precipitation by increasing irrigation is found to be warranted from the farmers’ perspective; however, it is not beneficial to society as a whole. Abolishing import tariffs effectively transfers surpluses from producers to consumers, but the impact of this policy on social welfare is relatively modest.We propose a model that simulates climate change impacts on crop production and food prices under partial equilibrium. Our model incorporates a system of Laspeyres price and quantity indices that link structurally estimated community-level produce supply functions to market level demand functions. The supply estimation accounts for corner solutions associated with disaggregate land use observations and is constrained to reproduce aggregate supply data. We use the model to assess climate change impacts in Israel, which protects local agriculture by import tariffs and quotas. The simulation results vary greatly when we allow prices to change as a response to supply changes, highlighting the importance of endogenizing prices in climate change simulations. The results imply that climate changes projected for Israel are expected to be beneficial to farmers, particularly due to the positive impact of the forecasted large temperature rise on field crop production. Fruit outputs are projected to decline, and reduce consumer surplus, but to a lower extent than the increase in total agricultural profits. Nearly 20% of the profit rise is attributed to farmers’ adaptation through land reallocation. Adaptation to the projected reduction in precipitation by increasing irrigation is found to be warranted from the farmers’ perspective; however, it is not beneficial to society as a whole. Abolishing import tariffs effectively transfers surpluses from producers to consumers, but the impact of this policy on social welfare is relatively modest.

Can resource windfalls reduce corruption? We find that, in democratic regimes with unlimited reelection, the answer is in the affirmative, contrasting a widely held view. The reason is that resource windfalls increase future graft prospects, motivating opportunistic incumbents to postpone their planned embezzlement, which in turn requires them to seek reelection and behave well in order to increase the reelection chances. Term limits mitigate, and may even reverse, this effect by inducing opportunistic incumbents that otherwise would seek reelection to step down. We test the model’s predictions using a panel of U.S. states over the period 1976–2007. Our identification strategy rests on constitutionally-entrenched differences in gubernatorial term limits, and geographically-based cross-state differences in natural resource endowments. Our baseline estimates point at a sizeable impact. We find that a one standard deviation increase in resource windfalls decreases the average corruption level in states with no term limits by 20%, but increases average corruption in states with term limits by 10%. These results suggest that the nature of political institutions is important for understanding the nexus between resource windfalls and corruption.

The fashion industry is adapting to the new situation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic by changing the structure of its supply chain, much like other industries that experience exogenous shocks. The pandemic affected conditions of apparel retailers: downstream among consumers and upstream among suppliers. It induced retailers to accelerate the adoption of technologies to make their supply chains more flexible and resilient. Before COVID-19, the apparel industry had gradually adopted virtual dressing room (VDR) technologies and crowd wisdom software, both of which reduce the risk associated with online purchases. Apparel retailers also altered the structure of their supply chains by outsourcing product turns via third-party logistics providers. This article analyzes how changes in market demand and supply conditions following the outbreak of COVID-19 accelerated the adoption of VDR technologies. The analysis is based on a conceptual microeconomic model of adopting technologies and changes in the supply chain. We support our theoretical findings with business cases. Understanding the nonlinear relationships among changes in demand, supply chains, and retail technology adoption triggered by exogenous shocks is essential for managers and affects the quality of service.The fashion industry is adapting to the new situation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic by changing the structure of its supply chain, much like other industries that experience exogenous shocks. The pandemic affected conditions of apparel retailers: downstream among consumers and upstream among suppliers. It induced retailers to accelerate the adoption of technologies to make their supply chains more flexible and resilient. Before COVID-19, the apparel industry had gradually adopted virtual dressing room (VDR) technologies and crowd wisdom software, both of which reduce the risk associated with online purchases. Apparel retailers also altered the structure of their supply chains by outsourcing product turns via third-party logistics providers. This article analyzes how changes in market demand and supply conditions following the outbreak of COVID-19 accelerated the adoption of VDR technologies. The analysis is based on a conceptual microeconomic model of adopting technologies and changes in the supply chain. We support our theoretical findings with business cases. Understanding the nonlinear relationships among changes in demand, supply chains, and retail technology adoption triggered by exogenous shocks is essential for managers and affects the quality of service.

We investigate how the status and functional benefits of cars’ brands lose value over time. Theoretically, we show that brands with a higher status, or that appeal to status-conscious consumers, exhibit steeper price decline over time. Empirically, we take advantage of the phenomenon of twin cars – pairs of car models that are nearly identical from a structural and mechanical standpoint, but that are sold under differing brand names – to disentangle the effects of physical wear and tear, which should impact both the premium brand and the corresponding standard brand similarly; and time-related price decline, which should affect each brand differently. The main result is that a premium car’s price declines much faster than that of the corresponding standard car (controlling for physical condition, mileage, and initial price). This result suggests that status declines faster than do functional attributes, and status seekers tend to replace their cars earlier.

This paper studies the impact of lobbying on policies in a centrally managed water economy. First, we develop an optimal control model in which long-run water-management policies are an outcome of negotiation between policymakers and a politically organized farming sector. We show that under equilibrium conditions in the political game, larger political power of the farmers' lobby leads to faster exhaustion of naturally replenished water resources, and expedites the investment in water-supply backstop technologies such as desalination. Then, we employ a detailed hydro-economic model of Israel's water economy to assess the validity of claims by scientists and bureaucrats that lobbying by the local agricultural sector has contributed to the depletion of the country's natural freshwater resources and thus accelerated the development of seawater desalination. Specifically, we compare observed trajectories of water-management policies in the years 2000–2020 to their simulated counterparts, and find a better fit for simulated scenarios that involve lobbying than for a socially optimal one; this result prevails under simulated conditions of extreme water shortage due to faster population growth or lower recharge of natural water sources. The best-fitted political-equilibrium scenarios indicate considerable deadweight loss. We discuss potential causes of over- and undervaluation of the lobbying effect.

Willow (Salix spp.) is grown for energy biomass in temperate regions and is also a promising source of feed for ruminants. Willow fodder contains high concentrations of beneficial plant specialized metabolites (PSMs). We investigated the efficacy of ensiling willow fodder in 1.5 L jars without (control-C) or with silage additives (lactobacilli-LAB, molasses-M, or the combination MLAB), and the effects on nutritional attributes of ensiling willow in 60 L drums with LAB. We also assessed the effect of ensiling willow fodder on PSMs by liquid chromatography / time-offlight / mass spectrometry (LC-TOF-MS). Exact or tentative compound identification was established, depending on availability of appropriate standards. In jars, LAB-supplemented silages reached lowest pH (4.2). M-supplemented silages had lower aNDF and aADF contents. IVDMD was higher in M than in C, and the contents of crude protein (CP) were not affected by silage treatments. Ensiling in drums did not affect the major nutritional components of willow fodder. Even though phenylalanine, arginine, tyrosine, histidine, and methionine, but not tryptophan, were increased 3.8-7.9-fold by ensiling, the finding is of low importance, as free amino acids are totally degraded in the rumen. In contrast, the main PSM, i.e., the salicinoid salicin was 74 % deglycosylated, concomitantly with a ten-fold increase in salicylic acid concentration and with the appearance of acetyl-salicylic acid; likewise, the flavonoids hyperin and rutin were 66 % deglycosylated, consequent with a 48-fold increase in quercetin concentration. As the bioavailability of the quercetin aglycone is inferior to that of its glycosylated counterparts, ensiling might affect the nutraceutical value of willow fodder. Likewise, catechin, gallocatechin and epicatechin were totally metabolized by ensiling. Overall, ensiling willow fodder (with LAB) does not affect the nutritional attributes of willow fodder but it greatly alters its PSM concentrations and, possibly impairs its nutraceutical value. However, as anti-oxidative activity is supposed to increase, following de-glycosylation, further research is needed to evaluate a possible trade-off on nutraceutical value between the glycosylated and aglycone forms of phenolics contained in willow fodder.

Risky decisions are often characterized by (a) imprecision about consequences and their likelihoods that can be reduced by information collection, and by (b) unavoidable background risk. This article addresses both aspects by eliciting risk attitude, prudence, and temperance in decisions from description and decisions from experience. The results reveal a novel description-experience gap for prudence and replicate the known gap for risky decisions. While widespread prudence has been observed in decisions form description, we find no evidence of prudent decision making from experience. In decisions from experience people are strongly influenced by the sampled mean, while skewness plays a smaller role than in decisions from description.

The populations of the endangered mountain gazelle (Gazella gazella), which inhabit large parts of Israel, across various ecosystems and climatic conditions, shrunk drastically over the last decades. To date, data on gazelle nutrition, how these relate with individual characteristics and respond to seasonal and environmental changes, have not been available. We analyzed 110 samples from gazelle rumen contents collected throughout the country from occasional fatalities, mainly roadkills, and tested the feasibility of using them for near-infrared spectrometry (NIRS) calibrations. Although NIR calibrations for crude protein, in vitro dry matter digestibility, and ash were reasonable, we found that using calibrations based on local forage and feed plant species performed better, and used these to estimate several nutritional constituents in gazelle rumens, using NIRS. We tested how constituents relate to the sex, age-class, and weight of the individual gazelle, and to season and ecosystem type, and found that season plays a major role in gazelle nutrition. Winter is the most propitious season, when crude protein, ash and digestibility are highest, and acid detergent fiber (ADF), neutral detergent fiber (NDF), and the carbon to nitrogen (C:N) ratio are lowest. Autumn, being the harshest season, mirrors winter conditions, and summer and spring show intermediate levels. Yet the relative changes between seasons were mild: about 30%, for crude protein, digestibility, and ash, and 14-22% for ADF, NDF, and C:N ratio. Ecosystem type affected several constituents, and nutrition was slightly better in Mediterranean than in dry ecosystems. Gazelle sex, weight, and age-class had minor effects on nutrition. Overall, it seems that the adaptation of gazelles to their environment is germane to keeping relatively steady nutrition throughout the year. Our results, which do not show a dramatic decline in the quality of gazelle nutrition during any season or among the climatic regions that were studied, suggest that nutrition is not a major driver of the survival of gazelles in the populations surveyed.

Agroholdings have become a major player in Russian agriculture in less than two decades. Nevertheless, there is no legal definition of agroholding as an organisation, and no statistical information on agroholdings as a distinct category is collected. Only informal definitions exist, which regard agroholdings as groupings of agricultural enterprises linked into a single management network. The numerous publications on Russian agroholdings are mostly based on limited or sporadic data. This is the first study that assembles a full list of more than 1,000 agroholdings in Russia and analyses the corresponding data from official sources. The study examines the role of agroholdings in Russian agriculture and estimates some performance measures. We group all agricultural enterprises (corporate farms in their own right) in Russia into agroholding members and independent, non-member farms, and perform a comparative analysis of the two distinct organisational forms that are at the focus of Russian agricultural policy.

Israeli agriculture has experienced rapid structural changes in recent decades, including the massive exit of farmers, a resulting increase in average farm size, a higher farm specialization and a higher reliance on non-farm income sources. The higher farm heterogeneity makes it necessary to examine changes in the entire farm size distribution rather than the common practice of analyzing changes in the average farm size alone. This article proposes a nonparametric analysis in which the change in the distribution of farm sizes between two periods is decomposed into several components, and the contributions of subgroups of farms to this change are analyzed. Using data on Israeli family farms, we analyze the changes in the farm size distribution in two separate time periods that are characterized by very different economic environments, focusing on the different contributions of full-time farms and part-time farms to the overall distributional changes. We found that between 1971 and 1981, a period characterized by stability and prosperity, the farm size distribution has shifted to the right with relatively minor changes in higher moments of the distribution. On the other hand, between 1981 and 1995, a largely unfavorable period to Israeli farmers, the change in the distribution was much more complex. While the overall change in the size distribution of farms was smaller in magnitude than in the earlier period, higher moments of the distribution were not less important than the increase in the mean and led to higher dispersion of farm sizes. Between 1971 and 1981, the contributions of full- and part-time farms to the change in the size distribution were quite similar. Between 1981 and 1995, however, full-time farms contributed mostly to the growth in the average farm size, while the average farm size among part-time farms actually decreased, and their contribution to the higher dispersion of farm sizes was quantitatively larger. This highlights the need to analyze the changes in the entire farm size distribution rather than focusing on the mean alone, and to allow for differences between types of farms.

Past research has demonstrated that many individuals are not well equipped to make financial decisions and hence depend greatly on the flow and quality of financial information. Various governments are implementing reforms aimed at improving the quality of pension financial communication. Certain countries are requiring a move to short-form pension reporting, and some are requiring digital reporting instead of (or in some cases, in addition to) paper reporting. In a series of experiments, we show that the ability to locate information in financial reports is sensitive to the length of the report and to the communication form.

This study aims to determine how feelings of nationalism or patriotism for one's own country and feelings of animosity for countries that are in political conflict affect consumers’ willingness to refrain from buying products from various origins. Four hundred forty-two shoppers participated in a survey that included questions about ethnocentric and patriotic feelings and a choice task between local and foreign produce. We find that a significant proportion of Israeli consumers are not willing to buy imported produce from countries that are in conflict with Israel. The proportion of consumers who would not purchase imported produce increases substantially with the intensity of the conflict. Consumers who avoid buying produce from friendly countries are those whose ethnocentric and economic-centric relationship are strong.