Choice between alternative flexible functional forms has received little explicit treatment in many empirical agricultural studies. Theoretical criteria and empirical techniques for choosing between flexible functional forms are reviewed. Theoretical topics include definitions of flexibility,...

Fresh tomatoes are highly differentiated products: greenhouse and on-the-vine tomatoes are the most prominent new kinds of tomatoes. Scanner data were used to estimate a weakly separable, quadratic almost-ideal demand system. Uncompensated elasticities indicate (a) considerable own-price...

The evolving privatization of the ejido system in Mexico represents a challenge to standard economic models of common property regimes. These models tend to emphasize human interrelations while discounting the ecological conditions which form the environment for human interactions. A...

"Relationships between the potential productivity of land and property rights generally are couched in terms of measures of central tendency or means. However, risk or variance as a measure of uncertainty also is critical in relating property rights and organizational arrangements developed...

A theory is proposed that explains the evolution of a market based on a quality variant as it goes from being a niche to the market norm. Organic commodities are described as such a quality variant and used to focus on the economic and policy issues that arise during a market's evolution. It is...

Sales of newly introduced bagged, refrigerated salads grew at over 50% annually, during 1994-95. Consumption of bagged salads displayed marked seasonality despite year-round availability and uniform quality at more stable prices than head lettuce. Using scanner data from 44 areas, a...

Primary data collected from grower-shippers of fresh tomatoes in California, Florida, and Mexico reveal considerable heterogeneity among firms. Many firms which are extending their shipping seasons outside traditional seasons must have access to land in diverse geographic areas through ownership...

In January 1985, rate-of-flow controls (“prorate”) for California-Arizona navel oranges were suspended for half the marketing season. This article compares the behavior of industry marketing margins during the deregulated period with that of regulated seasons in order to assess the impacts...