James Vercammen

University of California, Berkeley, 1991, PhD, Agriculture and Resource Economics

University of Saskatchewan, 1988, MSc, Agricultural Economics

University of Saskatchewan, 1986, BSA, Agricultural Economics

James conducts research in the general area of commodity prices and environmental policy. Of particular interest is the use of time series methods to examine the link between energy prices and food prices. In a second strand of research James examines how Canada’s federal carbon tax impacts the price of agricultural commodities. More recently, James has been using machine learning models to analyze commodity prices in various agri-energy applications. James was co-editor of the Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics from 2008 – 2013 and the American Journal of Agricultural Economics from 2013 – 2017.

James teaches primarily at the graduate level in the Master of Food and Resource Economics (MFRE) program: FRE 501 Strategic Economic Analysis of Agri-Food Markets.

For a full list of publications, please see Google Scholar.

Textbook

Vercammen, James (2011), Agricultural Marketing Structural Models for Price Analysis, Routledge.

Journal Articles

Vercammen, J. “A random walk for agricultural total factor productivity”, Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics (Special Issue) 72 (2024): 213 – 233.

Vercammen, J. “Information Rich Wheat Markets in the Early Days of COVID-19”, Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics (Special Issue) 68 (2020): Pages 177-184.

Vercammen, J., “A Dynamic Analysis of Cost‐share Agri‐environmental Programs”, Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics 67 (2019): 15-30.

Vercammen, J., “A Welfare Analysis of Conservation Easement Tax Credits”, Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, 6, no. 1 (2019): 43-71.

Fulton M. and J. Vercammen, “Optimal NGO Financing of a Resource Management Certification Scheme”, Environmental and Resource Economics 58 (2014): 605 – 626.

Vercammen, J. and A. Doroudian, “Portfolio Speculation and Commodity Price Volatility in a Stochastic Storage Model”, American Journal of Agricultural Economics 96 (2014): 517 – 532.

Vercammen, J. “A Partial Adjustment Model of Federal Direct Payments in Canadian Agriculture”, Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics 61 (2013): 465 - 485.

Vercammen, J. “Agri-Environmental Regulations, Policies, and Programs”, Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics 59 (March, 2011): 1 – 18.

Students in the Masters of Food and Resource Economics (MFRE) program spend the last four months (May to August) conducting a graduating project. Each year James supervises one or more projects. Examples of recent projects include:

• Forecasting the Changes in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for Various Food Categories
• Electricity Demand in Response to Temperature Fluctuations in Alberta
• Simulation Methods for Pricing a Weather Derivative
• Optimal Pairs Trading Strategies for WTI and Brent Crude Oil Futures Contracts
• A Spatial Analysis of Access to Food Supermarkets by Marginalized Households in British Columbia
• Mitigating Methane Emissions in Canadian Beef Cattle Production
• Supply Chain Analysis of Food Prices