The paper attempts to highlight the question, if modern complex systems theory can be a relevant and useful tool for agricultural economics and other applied economic disciplines and how. Focus is on the consequences of self-organization, an emergent property of large systems with many...

The use of environmental policy instruments such as eco-labelling and pesticide taxes should preferably be based on disaggregate estimates of the individuals’' willingness to pay (WTP) for pesticide risk reductions. We review the empirical valuation literature dealing with pesticide risk...

We develop and estimate an integrated discrete choice model system of product choice and nutrition information for prepared frozen meals and salted snacks in the United States in the period from 1995 to 1999. The model links consumer observed and latent characteristics (e.g., income, knowledge...

The rise of contract farming and vertical integration is one of the most important changes in modern agriculture. Yet the adoption and diffusion of these new forms of organization has varied widely across regions, commodities, or farm types, however. Transaction cost theories and the like are...

This paper examines whether buyers of live lambs and goats in the Northeast region have systematic preferences for specific live product attributes (age, weight, market class, sales lot size, market location and timing of sale) and whether they pay significantly different prices for these...

In the increasingly consumer-driven food system, consumer preferences toward agricultural biotechnology have the potential to influence decisions about development and adoption of biotech crop varieties. Current knowledge about consumer attitudes toward biotech foods is largely based on a number...

The purpose of this paper was to investigate the role of trust in the performance of the sugar industry supply chain in Swaziland. The study utilized perceptions of 124 smallholder cane growers in the sugar industry in Swaziland. Items presented in a likert type scale were used to measure cane...

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...

The decisions of young adults from non-metropolitan areas to either migrate to metropolitan areas or remain in non-metropolitan areas following the completion of schooling are studied in this paper. The migration decision is decomposed into an hourly initial earnings component and a cost...

Accurately estimating consumer demand for new products is an arduous task made even more difficult by the fact that individuals tend to overstate the amount they are willing to pay for new goods when asked hypothetical questions. Despite their appeal in eliminating hypothetical bias, marketers...