In the long term, productivity and especially productivity growth are necessary conditions for the survival of a farm. In this paper, we focus on the technology choice of a dairy farm, i.e. the choice between a conventional and an automatic milking system. Our aim is to reveal the extent to...

Capital gains taxes are likely to distort the market and resource allocations through so called “lock-in” effect, meaning discouraging trade transactions that trigger the tax payments. When it comes to agricultural land, the lock-in effect implies that the land ownership and active farming...

Factor Markets Coordination: Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), Brussels, Belgium

Factor Markets Coordination: Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), Brussels, Belgium

This paper estimates farmer decisions between three discrete occupational choices: exit and close down the farming operation (1), exit and transfer the farm to a new entrant (2), or continue farming and retain the option to exit later on (3). The farmer optimisation problem is formulated as a...

This article explores long-term land improvement (lime application) under land tenure insecurity on leased land. The dynamic optimisation problem is solved by a stochastic dynamic programming routine with known parameters for one-period returns and transition equations. The model parameters...

A dynamic dual model of investment under uncertainty is applied to a panel of Finnish hog farms. Stochastic dynamic programming is used to characterize duality relations. The model accommodates irreversibility and/or asymmetric adjustment costs. Results have important implications for Finland's...