Communist Entrepreneurs In capitalist societies, parents that are entrepreneurs tend to have children that also become entrepreneurs. Researchers in the U.S. and China studied (NBER Working Paper 28547) the impact of strong government involvement in the Chinese economy and found that the offspring of government workers also had a higher likelihood of becoming entrepreneurs. In provinces where government is higher, the likelihood that children of government workers would own incorporated businesses was significantly higher. Of course, some might argue that this is a form of self-dealing whereby government workers have certain information or insights that facilitate their offspring’s success in the marketplace. Catastrophes; Pos...
Key Takeaways: The CME Group is launching new 90 percent Lean Beef and 50 percent Lean Beef futures and options contracts in July. There are five key factors that must be present in physical markets and futures contract specifications for futures contracts to become successful. The two l...
What You Need to Know Today: The hot, dry weather forecast continues to drive strength in grain futures with corn and soybeans hitting another day of strong gains. Monday’s Crop Progress and Conditions data were in line with market expectations and showed relatively few concerns for the...
From WPI Consulting
Communicating importance of value-added products
Facing increasing pressure to quantify the value of export promotion efforts to investors, a U.S. industry organization retained WPI to develop a quantitative model that better communicated the importance of exports. The resulting model concluded that value-added meat exports contributed $0.45 cents per bushel to the price of corn, increasing support for that sector’s financial support of WPI’s client. In addition to serving the red meat industry with this type of analysis, WPI has generated similar deliverables for the U.S. soybean and poultry/egg industries.