In this paper we show that sorting different ability contestants in piece rate tournaments into more homogeneous groups alters incentives for agents to exert effort. In particular we show that for a given mean of the tournament group's ability parameters, larger variance (more heterogeneous...

This study analyzes the factors that determine the demand for milk products and the consumer benefits from organic milk introduction. Estimating a structural model, the welfare effect is decomposed into two parts: the effect of having an additional product and the effect from the price changes...

The objective of this study is to evaluate and model the risks of corn and soybean production. This study focuses on the risk of revenue variability that arises from changes in prices, yields shortfalls or both. There are several models for price and yield risk factors for corn and soybeans. For...

Replaced with revised version of paper 07/18/08.

In the US forestry industry, wildfire has always been one of the leading causes of damage. This topic is of growing interest as wildfire has caused huge losses for landowners, residents and governments in recent years. While individual wildfire behavior is well studied (e.g. Butry 2009; Holmes...

This paper discusses the volatility spillover effects in agricultural commodity markets, via studying implied volatilities derived from nearby options contracts. Using weekly averaged data from corn and soybean markets after 2003, a vector autoregressive (VAR) model is estimated, and impulse...

Our study focuses on modeling southern pine beetle (SPB) outbreaks in the southern area. The approach is to evaluate SPB outbreak frequency in a spatio-temporal framework. A block bootstrapping method with zero-inflated estimation has been proposed to construct a statistical model accounting for...

This paper determines the dynamic interaction between prices of corn, soybean, grain sorghum (milo), wheat, feeder cattle and live (fed) cattle by taking into account the surge in corn consumption stemming from the boost of mandated ethanol production. Corn is a major carbohydrate-feed component...

Replaced with revised version of paper 06/28/11.

Replaced with revised version of paper 07/29/10.