This dissertation explores the nature and scope of vertical coordination in the U.S. beef industry. From the perspective of the incomplete contract theory of the industrial organization literature, this dissertation first provides a theoretical economic explanation for the traditional and...

Vertical coordination through contracts between farmers and other stages of the agro food chain have been of growing importance in US agriculture. Production contract arrangements between contractors and individual growers have been one of the major vehicles of this emerging system of vertical...

This study is an enquiry about the role that service quality, asymmetric information, scope of regulation and regulator's preferences play in the regulation of monopolies, with an application to the case of the Chilean electricity distribution industry. In Chapter 1, I present the problem of...

The introduction of genetically modified (GM) crops in the mid 1990s appeared to be the latest in a string of technological innovations in agriculture. However, consumer resistance, particularly in Europe has limited the sector’s enthusiasm. One response to the limited enthusiasm has been the...

This study investigates the underlying reasons for a producer's choice of marketing channels for stocker cattle in the United States. In addition to traditional public auctions, private sales, video auctions, and Internet auctions have been recently used in the marketing of stocker cattle....

The discovery of StarLink corn in U.S. food products caused considerable disruption in the corn markets in 2000 and 2001. We estimated two models on the impact of StarLink corn over the 2000/2001 marketing year. In the first model, to segregate the U.S. corn market, identity preservation costs...

Sugar is a major commodity, produced and traded around the world, but it is no longer the only sweetener. For example, in the United States, roughly 50 percent of the sweetener market is made up of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), which is also making inroads into Mexico. This is not the case,...