In this paper recent developments in the estimation of frontier functions and the measurement of efficiency are surveyed, and the potential applicability of these methods in agricultural economics is discussed. Frontier production, cost and profit functions are discussed, along with the...

The significance of statistical lack-of-fit tests for hypothesized response functions describing experimental data is traced in some of the recent agricultural economics literature. The statistical test is reviewed in a regression framework and it is shown that the test is related to testing...

Increasing use of Benefit-Cost Analysis (BCA) in ex ante research evaluation has not been accompanied by consensus on the increased returns flowing from the evaluation effort. There are likely to be a wide range of views held by researchers, agricultural economists and research managers on how...

Many explanations of agricultural technology adoption have either been based loosely on diffusion concepts and have ignored economic factors or have been static economic models that ignore dynamic and spatial aspects of adoption. In this paper we propose a model of adoption which incorporates...

An optimal stochastic control model of grazing that incorporates both pasture and livestock dynamics is presented. The model is solved numerically using Markov chain approximation methods. Markov chain approximation methods have a number of advantages as a means of solving stochastic optimal...

Harold Hotelling proposed the first method for non-market valuation. Most of us believe this is the Travel Cost Method. In this paper I argue that the first method is from Hotelling's seminal study on the extraction of exhaustible resources. The first method is dynamic optimisation as applied to...

Domestic Resource Costs (DRC) are widely used to measure comparative advantages in production of any commodity in a country. Basically, the DRC measures the opportunity costs of producing specified goods with reference to border prices for both inputs, especially imported and/or tradable, and...

We investigate how to theoretically and empirically measure pre-committed quantities through price formation utilizing translating in the consumer distance function. The translated consumer distance function is defined as a dual to the translated utility, indirect utility, and expenditure...