Biofuels have been widely promoted as an important part of the global energy mix, due to public interest in alternative energy sourcing and a potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Concurrently, questions have been raised about the social and environmental costs of biofuel production....

This study investigates the optimal switching boundary to a renewable fuel when oil prices exhibit continuous random fluctuations along with occasional discontinuous jumps. In this paper, oil prices are modeled to follow jump diffusion processes. A completeness result is derived. Given that the...

With the rising global interest in energy security and climate change mitigation, biofuels have gained the prominent attention of researchers and policy makers. The U.S. has emerged as the leading producer of biofuels and is aiming for achieving a target of 36 billion gallons of renewable fuels...

Replaced with revised version of paper 09/14/11.

In recent years there has been a flurry of activity aimed at evaluating the land use consequences of biofuels programs and the associated carbon releases. In this paper we argue that these studies have tended to underestimate the ensuing land use change, because they have ignored the role of...

Economists are relying on agronomic concepts to construct weather or climate independent variables and improve the reliability and efficiency of econometric models of climate change impact on U.S. agriculture. The use of cumulative heat measures in agronomy (growing degree-days), has recently...

This paper examines the spatial externalities of conventional and organic pest control methods to determine if, and how, the two types affect each other. These interactions make the problem more complicated than the usual analysis of a single externality. The numerical simulation model includes...

Replaced with revised version of paper 09/23/11.

The Economics of fertilizer application has been an interesting issue in regard to crop production (Kennedy et al., 1973). Understanding the temporal dynamics complicates the issue along two dimensions: fertilizer carryover and fertilizer runoff. Fertilizer carryover measures the amount of...