This paper uses plant-level micro-data from the 2002 Census of Manufactures, Food Safety Inspection Service, and the Economic Research Service in a translog cost function to examine the costs of effort devoted to the performance of sanitation and process control tasks and levels of food safety...

We use data from a recent national survey to analyze the use of subtherapeutic antibiotics (STAs) among producers of broilers. STAs are included in feed or water and are intended to prevent disease or promote growth. Producers who do not use STAs instead rely on a set of other practices,...

The issuance of weak patents is widely viewed as a fundamental problem in the current US patent system. Reasons that have been offered for the granting of weak patents by the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) include examiners’ “rational ignorance” of the patentability of applications...

Replaced with revised version of paper 07/29/10.

I study the economic consequences of shifting bargaining power in relational contracts through interventions such as the formation of a Bargaining Group (BG) for the side of sellers in a market where buyers traditionally hold significant market power. Existing theories of relational contracts...

Through analyzing the effect of a demand characteristic, this paper investigates the reasons for the market phenomenon that farm and/or wholesale price changes are transmitted asymmetrically to retail markets.

Recent agronomic research finds that economically optimal seeding densities have likely increased for many Midwestern corn farmers as a result of genetic improvements including new GM traits such as Bt corn and herbicide tolerance. We derive a per acre demand model for hybrid seed corn to...

Replaced with revised version of paper 12/30/09.