To estimate the U.S. ethanol impacts on corn prices, and their subsequent impacts
on Mexico’s corn import bill, we rely on recent results from Babcock’s “backcasting”
model. Babcock’s partial-equilibrium modeling has the advantages that it covers multiple
years (through crop-year 2009-10), it examines U.S. corn ethanol, and it estimates price
impacts not just of U.S. ethanol policies but separately the impacts of U.S. ethanol
expansion since 2004. Specifically, it poses the modeling question: what would corn
prices have been if corn use for ethanol had not expanded beyond its 2004 levels?
(Babcock 2011)