Using 11 years of experimental crop yields by cropping systems and fertilizer level, a MOTAD frontier was developed. This analysis allowed yield, cost, and stability interactions arising from crop sequences to be implicitly included. Target-MOTAD, Safety-First, and undominated stochastic...

Using U.S. apparel catalogue data, we estimate hedonic price functions to identify market valuation of environmental attributes of apparel goods. We identify a significant and robust premium for the organic fibers embodied in the apparel goods. We find an additional organic premium for baby...

This paper analyzes the potential trade offs and complementarities that exist between intra-year strategies employing annual price and yield risk contracts and inter-year self-insurance strategies involving intertemporal consumption substitution and borrowing, and examines whether standard crop...

We hypothesize that imperfect quality measurement in contracts for fresh fruits and vegetables results in a moral-hazard problem, and that the final price of the produce provides additional information regarding quality. As a consequence, growers are not shielded from all price risk. This...

An optimization model is used to evaluate the economics of various components of a large agribusiness. The benefits of using interger programming are contrasted to traditional linear programming analysis in conjunction with outside-the-model budgeting analysis.

We investigate the objectives of agricultural bank managers and their impacts on bank efficiency. If managers are non-neutral toward risk, then banks may appear inefficient when they are not. We find non-neutrality toward risk and efficiency gains due to firm size, loan shares, asset shares, and...

Market structure is tested in 47 subsectors of the US food industry between 1958-1994. All industries exert market power in at least some of the sample years. Deadweight loss estimates resulting from noncompetitive behavior ranging from over $5 billion in soft drinks to under $1 million in the...

For the first time in the food trade literature, the determinants of intra-industry trade (IIT) in horizontally differentiated products and vertically differentiated products are separately tested using the most recent theoretical models of IIT. For both 1980 and 1990, the econometric results...

Pre-harvest corn and soybean options-based pricing strategies, and crop yield and revenue insurance were applied to model farms in three states. These combinations reduced income variability while increasing net incomes relative to uninsured harvest cash sales. Adding crop insurances to...

Liberalization of agricultural markets leads to new risks for European farmers. This paper studies the feasibility of income insurance schemes for European crop and livestock farmers. Different insurance topics, such as governmental reinsurance and the use of mutual insurance funds, are...