This article is a reflection on the path taken by production economics and farm management over the last century, and the progress made in understanding the economics of the farm. The accumulated knowledge has helped refine our assessment of the efficiency of farm management decisions and the...

A firm model of production and hedging decisions is developed using a mean-variance preference function. Comparative static analysis of the model generates a number of testable hypotheses. For example, the influence of price risk, production risk and hedging cost on the optimal level of...

An integrated investigation of futures price, cash price, and government programs is presented in the context of an econometric model of acreage supply response for U.S. corn and soybeans. The analysis refines the role of different sources of price information in the farmers' acreage decision....