In emerging markets for high-value food products in developing countries, processing companies search for efficient ways to source raw material of consistent quality. One widely embraced approach is contract farming. But relatively little is known about the appropriate design of contracts,...

Paper for presentation at the Northeastern Agricultural & Resource Economics Association’s Workshop on Economics and Child Nutrition Programs, AAEA & NAREA Joint Annual Meeting, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, July 23, 2011.

This paper determines the demand for a forestry program amongst rural households in western Kenya. It is based on a field survey with 277 households, using a stratified random sampling approach. The study follows attribute based method to elicit farmers’ preferences. Demand is measured in...

Multi-attribute modeling has rapidly progressed from being a novelty to becoming a widely used tool of economic research. When both choice and attribute ratings data are available, a model that makes joint use of both offers informative inference opportunities. In the present study we develop a...

We employed a cross-nested logit (CNL) model that permits a rich pattern of substitution among alternatives within a closed form choice model. The specification we employed is ideal for applications with many choice alternatives, such as the 431 fishing sites in this application. The CNL model...

Structural change in meat consumption has been the focus of many researchers during the last two decades. In this paper we develop a dynamic linear Almost Ideal Demand System (AIDS) model from a cost function that allows for time varying parameters. This model is consistent with inertia in the...

This paper analyses the economics of biofuel production and the implications that the accelerating growth in biofuel production in many countries could have on agricultural markets. It shows that production costs of ethanol and biodiesel differ significantly across countries and feedstock crops....

This study examines the dynamic effects of grain prices and energy prices on catfish feed prices and the price of food-sized catfish at the farm level. Using the autoregressive distributed lag model and bounds testing procedure, a long-run relationship between feed and farm prices and their...

This study uses panel data at suburb level to estimates the elasticity water demands inPerth, Australia from 1995 to 2005. After deriving the consumer’s water demand under anon-linear budget constraint, we estimate the water demand model, which accounts forhow water (and other purchased goods)...

Recent increases in the price of crude oil have led to a rise in the prominence of corn-based ethanol as an alternative source of energy. As a result linkages have been established between commodity and energy prices. The aim of this study is to determine if soybeans, corn, wheat, oil, and...