The paper presents an examination of genetic-based technological change in the Canadian beef cattle industry. A model of technological change is explicitly developed in characteristics space. Production functions with genetic characteristics as arguments are estimated and two forms of...

This paper provides an econometric investigation of the role of a renewable natural resource, sawlogs, in the production of lumber over the period 1950-1974. The economic scarcity of sawlogs is confirmed. Within a given production technology, the potential for substitution among capital, labor...

An econometric model is estimated to simulate the impact of introducing bovine somatotropin (BST) on the California dairy industry. Forecasts of 1991-94 milk production and prices without BST are compared to those with BST under the 1990 Farm Bill. The effects are evaluated under a range in...

The effects of price changes on irrigation technology transitions and potential agricultural water conservation in the Pacific Northwest are analyzed using Parks' (1980) modified multinomial logit model. Results indicate that commodity price effects are statistically significant, but they are...

The complementary interaction between topsoil depth and technical progress for winter wheat in the Palouse region was found to strengthen the long run payoff to conservation tillage. Nonetheless, conservation tillage was found to be competitive with conventional tillage only if its current yield...

The welfare benefits from potential rice yield-enhancing and water-saving research programs and their distributional implications under alternative farm program provisions are compared. This is done in an ex ante surplus maximization framework by using a multiregional, price endogenous...

This paper investigates the relationship between farm size and technology adoption by applying a model recently developed by Just and Zilberman to the choices of a sample of southwestern soybean farmers. The adoption of double cropping soybeans with wheat is evaluated with an expanded model...

The decision-making process by which academic departments within an experiment station allocate funds among commodities is examined. The decision to conduct research on some commodities and not on others introduces a problem of censored dependent variables. In order to overcome this problem, a...

The U.S. Congress and courts have directed federal natural resource agencies to use better information for management decisions than they have used in the past. It is also important for these agencies to improve the efficiency of resource use where possible. This information economics study...