This article examines the production risk effects and welfare implications of Bt corn adoption in the Philippines by specifically considering the impact of Bt on the mean, variance, and skewness of yields. Assessing the skewness effects of Bt provides further inferences about the downside risk...

This paper analyzes the theoretical underpinnings of producers’ willingness to pay (WTP) for novel inputs. In addition to conceptualizing the WTP function for producers, we derive its comparative statics and demonstrate the use of these properties to estimate input quantities demanded, outputs...

This paper compares environmental and profitability outcomes for a centralized biorefinery for cellulosic ethanol that does all processing versus a biorefinery linked to a decentralized array of local depots that pretreat biomass into concentrated briquettes. The analysis uses a spatial...

There is a large literature which investigates the relationship between market concentration and innovation. It is difficult to find a suitable measure for innovative output. We use a rich dataset based on university trials of corn hybrids to estimate, using fixed effects, a production function....

In this paper, we contribute to the existing literature of global yield gap analysis by using geo-spatial dataset on crop yields, agro-climatic factors and selected socio-economic variables. In line with the literature, we link yield gaps to technical efficiencies. By treating each grid-cell as...

Perennial crop production is inherently dynamic due to several salient physical characteristics including an establishment period of several years with low or no yields, long lives in commercial production (40 years or more), and path-dependence of yields on input use and other exogenous...

This study investigates the impact of risk preferences on economic efficiency scores. Risk averse individuals may be less likely to adopt new technologies and have lower production levels than individuals with other risk preferences. Nonparametric techniques are used to estimate cost and revenue...

This study analyzes the implications of increasing population density in Kenya’s rural areas on smallholder production and commercialization. Using data from five panel surveys on 1,146 small-scale farms over the 1997-2010 period, we use econometric techniques to determine how increasing rural...

This study seeks to provide a rigorous theoretical and empirical understanding of the effects of exogenous geographic and climate-related factors on the first three moments of crop yields. We hypothesize that exogenous geographic and climate factors that have beneficial effects on crop...