Since the destruction and despair caused by the dust bowl of the 1930’s, Americans and their government have taken a keen interest in natural resource conservation policy on agricultural land. The Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act of 1936 was the first farm bill to include...

Farms in Tajikistan currently face a severe debt crisis that has been caused by a combination of two factors typical of such situations in many countries: (a) the inability of the farms to make a profit under current conditions and (b) continued lending by the banks to cotton producers...

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...

Xi Chen acknowledges generous Doctoral Research Grant from the Institute for the Social Sciences at Cornell University and precious data set provided by the Development Strategy and Governance Division at IFPRI. Conference Travel Grant provided by the Department of Applied Economics and...

This paper aims to identify signs of overconfidence among corn producers in south and central-west Brazil. Over the period from October to November 2008, farmers were chosen to answer questions regarding their knowledge of futures markets and price expectations. A large part of subjects...

Neoclassical economic theory models individuals as making consistent choices over time and it assumes these choices are the outcome of rational utility maximization. Recent theoretical developments in the theory of consumer decision-making have drawn evidence from other disciplines such as,...

The paper examines agricultural production and productivity growth in two Central Asian countries – Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Both countries are characterized by a significant shift of resources from the traditional Soviet model of collective agriculture to more market-compliant individual...