The hypothetical distribution of multiple technology adoptions under the assumption that technologies are mutually independent is compared against the actual observed distribution of technology adoptions on hog farms. Combinations of technologies that occur with greater frequency than would...

This study tests whether evidence supports the hypothesis that rural immigrant populations are more sensitive to relative returns to human capital and living costs will be more elastic than those of native-born citizens. An empirically tractable model of incentive to migrate is developed...

A utility maximizing framework is used to model how wages, housing prices, and commuting time affect joint decisions of where to live and where to work. The implied multinomial logit model yields plausible estimates of the role of economic variables on joint residence/job location choices.

Consolidation in the U.S. pork industry continues to reduce the number of operations, while increasing the demand for hired labor. This paper explores how wages have evolved over time by decomposing the increase in wages into a change in the level of wages, human capital, and returns to human...

Rural communities compete with each other for firms, but their residents often commute large distances to work. Consequently, rural communities can benefit from economic growth occurring as much as 50 miles away. Data on county population growth shows that counties benefit from growth one or two...

This session focuses on farm level labor supply and demand response using various methods of analysis. Off-Farm Work Participation, Off-Farm Labor Supply and On-Farm Labor Demand of U.S. Farm Operators Wallace Huffman, Iowa State University; Hisham El-Osta, USDA/ERS/RED. Estimating the Off-Farm...

A long-standing puzzle in labor economics has been the positive relationship between wages and firm size. Even after controlling for worker's observed characteristics such as education, work experience, gender, and geographic location, a significant firm size wage effect averaging 15 percent...

Growth in the meat packing and processing industry in the Midwestern United States has generated a significant amount of debate regarding the costs and benefits of this type of economic development. This research employs 1990-2000 proprietary data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics'...