The 1996 Fair Act authorized two types of income support payments for the major commodities, fixed decoupled payments, and marketing assistance loans. These provided a lower safety net for commodity programs than was political acceptable, and Congress passed emergency legislation providing...

In the last decades, problems related to environmental protection have become more and more important, involving a growing number of economic and social actors. The new role played by agriculture in this context requires not only innovations concerning policy instruments, but also an evolution...

Venetian villas, which make up one of the most typical systems of historical architectural goods in the Northern Italian countryside, are a clear example of the allocation problems of merit goods management. These problems derive from the differences between the limited financial resources...

My purpose is to consider how the events of September 11, 2001 have changed how we think about the world food system and the possibilities for agro-bioterrorism. I will divide them into three categories: direct threats to the world food system from agro-bioterrorism; market and development...

In this paper I use financial derivative pricing theory as a foundation for a computational approach to valuing multiple-exercise option contracts in a natural resources setting. Evidence from the western United States shows that option contracts for water can be even more exotic than many...

The results of simulation modelling carried out with GLEAMS on hypothetical scenarios driven by the Reform of Common Agricultural Policy are presented. The model was set up with data collected in recent research projects to simulate a typical cultivated environment of the Venetian Plain (north...

While economic growth has lifted more people from poverty than in any prior period, world market shocks of the 1970s and 1980s have caused a massive realignment in country policies, and future growth in population and income are expected to place heavy burdens on world resources. Recently, it...

The private and social costs of obesity have many causes, but their consequences can be grimly predicted with rough accuracy. Among the most devastating is the increased incidence of diabetes, of which 60 percent can be directly attributed to weight gain. There are now about a billion people...