This paper explores the economics of input decision by a firm facing production uncertainty. It relies on a state-contingent approach to production uncertainty. First, the paper develops a methodology to specify and estimate cost-minimizing input decisions under a state-contingent technology....

The study evaluates the gains of avoiding data-dependent specification search on an estimation sample in an application to discrete choice models. We incorporate data splitting, the process by which the total available sample is randomly split in two or more sub-samples with the first...

Economic theory is replete with causal hypotheses that are scarcely tested because economists are generally constrained to work with observational data. This article describes the use of causal inference methods for testing a hypothesis that one random variable causes another. Contingent on a...

This essay develops a new method to diagnose inconsistency in dichotomous choice contingent valuation with follow-up questions: in particular, downward bias in the mean WTP. It is shown that the previous methods aimed to explain this inconsistency in responses have ignored statistical...

The functional specification of mean-standard deviation approach is examined under location and scale parameter condition. Firstly, the full set of restrictions imposed on the mean-standard deviation function under the location and scale parameter condition are made clear. Secondly, the...

We demonstrate how a recently developed model selection procedure can be used to choose among competing stochastic frontier models where inefficiency depends on firm characteristics. We provide evidence on the power of this procedure. Moreover, we examine the effects of model choice on...

In this paper we propose a game-theoretic model of a rank-order tournament with private information and characterize its equilibrium solution. The model captures many important features of the production contracts once observed in the poultry industry. We use the contract settlement data from a...

Changes in production conditions associated with biological invasions can be complex. As a result, modeling invasive species management decisions can be difficult. Modeling these decisions is further compounded by externalities associated with spatial relationships among growers. In order to...

This paper explores the process of integrating spatial price information in planning tools such as marketing plans. An Excel spreadsheet is shown as an example and integrated with spatial software from ESRI to produce a spatially optimized marketing solutions. Examples from a farm in...