The impact of violent conflict on the state of the economy has been studied extensively since the two recent decades. In most studies the state of the economy is operationalized by stock market indices of the respective countries. In this paper we suggest investigating the impact of violent...

Replaced with revised version of paper 07/18/08.

The last three years have realized significant structural changes in the U.S. agricultural policy environment. These changes include nearly complete planting flexibility and the elimination of target-price-based income support for agricultural producers. Many have questioned the extent to which...

Recent empirical research and development in the cattle industry suggest several reasons to suspect structural change in economic relationships determining cattle prices. Standard forecasting models may ignore structural change and may produce biased and misleading forecasts. Vector...

In North Carolina, where soybeans and corn are the two primary crops, the recent increase in the demand for U.S. corn has triggered a shift of farm acreage from soybeans to corn, leading to a rapid rise in prices of both commodities. However, the rate of the price changes, as well as the price...

Replaced with revised version of paper 07/29/10.

The oilseed products complex is an important component of the U.S. agricultural sector. In 2000, almost 75 million acres were planted to soybeans, representing over 29 percent of total planted acreage, making soybeans second only to corn in terms of acreage (ERS/USDA, 2000). Soybean acreage has...