Motivated by several contemporary problems existing in U.S. agriculture, this thesis investigates three particular issues concerning different aspects of agricultural contracting between growers and processors. Specifically, the first essay investigates the relationship between the use of...

The static production efficiency model and the dynamic duality model of intertemporal decision making using a parametric approach have been continuously developed but in separate directions. The parametric approach takes statistical noise into account, which can provide accurate measures in a...