In processing industries, plant location decisions are costly and have consequences for firm profitability. When raw materials are heavy or perishable, transportation costs limit shipping distances and processors must compete locally for raw material inputs. To determine the likely profitability...

Price expectations play a critical role in commodity markets where producers must make input decisions well before output is realized. This paper brings together alternative expectations regimes, their estimation, and hypothesis tests for use in structural commodity models to determine their use...

Price expectations play a critical role in commodity markets where producers must make input decisions well before output is realized. This paper brings together alternative expectations regimes, their estimation, and hypothesis tests for use in structural commodity models to determine their use...

Policy preference functions (PPFs) explicate trade-offs among various political economic groups concerned with the policy process. Estimation methods for PPFs are detailed. The stochastic nature of PPF parameters is discussed and a method for developing standard errors is introduced. Hypothesis...

Partial backward integration is prevalent in many agricultural and natural resource processing industries. A strategic rationale for partial backward integration is developed for a dominant firm with a competitive fringe purchasing from competitive input suppliers. A partially backward...

"Protection of intellectual property embedded in self-replicating biological innovations, such as genetically modified seed, presents two problems for the innovator: the need for copy protection of intellectual property and price competition between new seed and reproduced seed. We consider...

Environmental regulations are hypothesized to have an impact on industry structure in manufacturing industries. A nonstationary Markov chain analysis shows that the capital expenditures required to meet environmental regulations is a statistically significant variable explaining increasing...

Nonstationary Markov analyses are used to investigate impacts of environmental regulatory costs associated with compliance on changes in market structure in pulp and paper industries. Results show environmental regulation expenditures have statistically significant effects on the probabilities...

In processing industries, plant location decisions are costly and have consequences for firm profitability. When raw materials are heavy or perishable, transportation costs limit shipping distances and processors must compete locally for raw material inputs. To determine the likely profitability...