The recent adoption of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs, namely mobile phones and radios) in rural areas of Sub- Saharan Africa has brought new evidence that an updated and reliable flow of information can have direct benefits for farmers' welfare. However, if correct market...

We investigate the comparative static effects of environmental and agricultural policies on pesticide and fertilizer use. Since such effects depend on technology and risk preference parameters, we estimate these from a panel data set of Illinois farms. Generalized method of moments is used on a...

We estimate the effects of the 2005 ban on vending machines in French schools using the 1998 and 2006 INCA nutrition surveys. These surveys contain no information on the presence of vending machines in schools attended by respondents, but the adoption of a Difference-in-Difference design, and a...

This paper fits a translog stochastic production frontier with inefficiency effects to a panel of 693 UK dairy farms for the period from 1982 to 1997. The Cobb Douglas is rejected as inadequate relative to the less restrictive translog functional form and the frontier model is statistically...

The biofuel industry has been rapidly growing around the world in recent years. Several papers have used general equilibrium models and addressed the economy-wide and environmental consequences of producing biofuels at a large scale. They mainly argue that since biofuels are mostly produced from...

One argument in favor of market based pollution control policies is sometimes exaggerated, and a different argument is usually ignored. Regardless of whether investment is fixed or endogenous, market based policies might lead to a higher or lower equilibrium abatement compared to the level under...

The United States is a large net exporter of corn seeds. Seed trade, including corn, has been expanding but its determinants are not well understood. This paper econometrically investigates the determinants of world demand for U.S. corn seeds with a detailed analysis of trade costs impeding...

The main objective of this study is to identify the financial and market characteristics of commercial banks' branch expansion decision. The nested logit model is used to analyze the characteristics to affect the expansion decision and location choice of commercial banks due to a two-level...

Replaced with revised version of paper 06/18/08. Former title: Non-Linearity in Belief and Environmental Risk Dynamics

The possible co-existence of spot and contract market that can emerge in the presence of quality issues with a number of growers and processors in each stage is something that has largely remained an open question in the literature. This paper is an attempt to fill this void. We use a...