This paper examines the incentive of atomistic agricultural producers within a specific geographical region to differentiate and collectively market products. We develop a model that allows us to analyze the market and welfare effects of the main types of real-world producer organizations, using...

A framework is developed for examining the price and welfare effects of the introduction of genetically modified (GM) crops. In the short run, non-GM grain generally becomes another niche product. However, more profound market effects are observed under some reasonable parameterizations. In the...

The paper examines the welfare impact of different intellectual property right (IPR) regimes in private sector seed research. The model takes into account the period after expiration of IPR protection, and requires a simultaneous equilibrium in the markets for R&D, seeds, and final product...

This study provides a comparative economic analysis of the primary production of pork and its marketing channel in Spain and the United States. The focus on Spain is due to the profound growth and transformation of its pork sector over the last 20 years, compared with other major players in the...

The Neoclassical theory of production establishes a dual relationship between the profit value function of a competitive firm and its underlying production technology. This relationship, usually referred to as the duality theory, has been widely used in empirical work to estimate production...

This study highlights some problems with using the Johansen cointegration statistics on data containing a negative moving average (NMA) in the error term of the data generating process. We use a Monte Carlo experiment to demonstrate that the asymptotic distribution of the Johansen cointegration...

The efficiency of redistribution and the level of government costs of revenue assurance are compared with current farm programs. The results suggest that a revenue assurance program that uses a fixed base acreage and actual or county average yields to assure whole farm revenues could provide a...

The vast majority of crop and revenue insurance policies sold in the United States are single-crop policies that insure against low yields or low revenues for each crop grown on a particular farm. This practice of insuring one crop at a time runs counter to the traditional risk management...

Building on recent work by Mirand and Glauber (1997), this report shows that it is feasible to use exchange-based contracts as a substitute for the Standard Reinsurance Agreement (SRA). The contract we analyze here is a Group Revenue Contract, which would allow producers to guarantee against...

A wide variety of insurance products is available to agricultural producers to insure against yield or price risks in the markets for the raw commodities they produce. Value-added enterprises, such as ethanol production, have been expanding over the last decade. This paper outlines the...