While controversy surrounds skewness attributes of typical yield distributions, a better understanding is important for agricultural policy assessment and for crop-insurance rate setting. <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="AAR091C5">Day (1965)</xref> conjectured that crop yield skewness declines with an increase in nitrogen use at low levels but...

Meat retailers express demand for a more uniform product, and technical innovations are allowing an increasingly uniform supply. Packers can promote uniformity through pre-slaughter sorting, or earlier through contracts. Emphasizing effort on the packing line, we develop a model whereby packers...

Food system regulators often decide whether to ban existing practices or approve new technologies without conclusive scientific evidence on possible damage and knowing that resolution is likely in the future. In a model with three decision points and stochastic resolution of uncertainty, we...

Trade in feeder animals creates externalities when animal diseases can spread beyond the purchasing farm. If growers choose between open and closed production systems, then Nash equilibrium likely involves excessive trading. While first-best equilibrium involves market-wide adoption of either an...

When nonpoint source pollution is stochastic and the damage function is convex, intuition might suggest it is more important to control a nonpoint pollution source than a point source. Earlier research has provided sufficient conditions such that the permit price for a unit of ex-ante expected...

The article develops a dynamic capital valuation model in which farms can act with farm-varying cost to increase the probability of avoiding an infectious endemic animal disease. Multiple endemic disease equilibria can exist, and the one with the largest set of action takers is socially optimal....

Two prominent features of recent changes in agriculture have been the advent of precision breeding techniques and an increase in the level of information netputs in production. This article identifies ways in which these features may complement in expanding the variety of processed products,...

We develop a conceptual model to study the impact of mandate policies on stimulating investment in cellulosic biofuel refineries. In a two-period framework, we compare the first-period investment level (FIL) under three scenarios: laissez-faire, non-waivable mandate (NWM) policy, and waivable...