COFFEECONOMICS

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REVISTA ACADÉMICA ECO (23) : 73-92, JULIO-DICIEMBRE DE 2020

challenges: (i) search and collection of primary data and costs from producers 
(large and small national coffee producers); (ii) monitoring coffee brokers around 
the world; and (iii) monitoring prices and quality of coffee among sellers and 
consumers. The future of the coffee market structure highly depends on being 
able to follow its microeconomic and macroeconomic behaviour in the short and 
long run. Likewise, Coffeeconomics is interested in following all new technologies 
and innovative products and services that this great industry generates.

The primary objective of Coffeeconomics involves evaluating and generating 
policies that benefit all players in the coffee market structure by means of doing 
specialized research and considering possible scenarios under varying risk levels, as 
well as potential policies to solve problems occurring in the coffee market structure. 
The main challenge of Coffeeconomics is to move from the traditional cost-benefit 
model to more dynamic and applicable economic simulations that follow closely 
the coffee market structure behaviour. The second challenge of Coffeeconomics is 
the use of artificial intelligence (AI), also known as the neural networks approach. 
The use of AI can help to evaluate the behaviour of producers, brokers, sellers, and 
consumers simultaneously. Neural networks provide a powerful analytical tool to 
evaluate the costs, prices, technological changes and market trends of coffee. The 
primary objective of neural networks is to select this information from databases 
and documents as well as to propose the most suitable solutions to failures in the 
coffee market structure, anytime and anywhere.

Therefore, the adaptation of AI to solve coffee market structure failures is directly 
connected to mathematical models, such as the theory of chaos, mathematical 
logic, and neural networks. Finally, a simulator to evaluate coffee market structure 
failures was introduced. This new tool is called the “National Coffee Production 
Function (NCP-Function)”. The next section provides a detailed explanation of the 
NCP-Function.