Economists tend to emphasize the optimum, but in many cases, even large deviations from optimal decisions make little difference to the payoff. This has far-reaching implications that are under-recognized, including: (a) decision makers often have a wide margin for error in their production...

The presence of weeds which have developed resistance to chemical herbicides is a problem of rapidly growing importance in Australian agriculture. We present an optimal control model of herbicide resistance development in ryegrass, the weed for which resistance is most commonly reported. The...

Risk and uncertainty have often been suggested as causes of poor adoption of rural innovations, but empirical evidence has been scarce. This study focuses on a new crop-type, chickpeas, in Western Australia to gather such evidence. The empirical models developed are based on a theoretical...

A programming technique, utility-efficient programming, is developed for farm planning under risk. The objective function is the parametric sum of two parts of the utility function in which the degree of risk aversion varies systematically with the parameter. This technique has several...