Fishers are faced with multiple risks, including unpredictability of future catch rates, prices and costs. While the latter are largely beyond the control of fisheries managers, effective fisheries management should reduce uncertainty about future catches. Different management instruments are...

This dissertation studies the role of the collective action sector for rural development. A combination of formal modeling, historical and institutional analysis, and econometric methods is used in this research. I develop microeconomic models to analyze the determinants of peasants' decisions...

Contingent valuation (CV) is a surveying technique used to estimate the willingness to pay (WTP) by individuals for non-market goods (goods for which no market of exchange exists). Many CV studies have shown the existence of hypothetical bias which occurs when individuals are asked a...

This research examines groundwater protection programs as a case study of investments to address long-term environmental health risks. The value individuals place on reducing their risk of exposure to chemical contaminants is estimated using stated preference methodology, accounting for the...

As progress has been made on tariff reduction by recent trade agreements, barriers to freer international trade arising from nontariff sources have become more prominent. Regulation of product quality and in particular food safety can be a major source of such barriers. Lowering them requires...

The three essays in this dissertation address issues pertinent to hypothetical bias in the contingent valuation (CV) mechanism. Empirical evidence gathered through several experiments conducted at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, is used to provide a better understanding of the cause...

This dissertation explores the interconnection between land ownership inequality and functioning of rural factor markets in Turkey. It investigates the effectiveness and efficiency of land and labor markets in generating and distributing economic opportunities within agriculture and, thereby, in...

Protection of the environment is among the most pressing public policy challenges and will continue to be so long into the future. Pollution, specifically, has played a pivotal and substantial role in the degradation of the environment. Although numerous analytical techniques and computational...

Mandatory Country of Origin Labeling (MCOOL) was implemented on seafood in the United States on April 4, 2005. MCOOL exempts the foodservice sector and excludes processed seafood from labeling. This dissertation contributes to understanding the economics of the MCOOL law for seafood by showing...

This dissertation analyzes price transmission, market power and vertical relationships at the processing and retailing levels for the fluid milk market in the New England area. The New England fluid milk market is particularly interesting due to its prior minimum farm price policies. This study...