Economic viability of the US corn ethanol industry depends on prices, technical and economic efficiency of plants and on continuation of policy support. Public policy support is tied to the environmental efficiency of plants measured as their impact on emissions of greenhouse gases. This study...

In this study we use data envelopment analysis to decompose the overall economic efficiency of a sample of ethanol plants into three subcomponents: technical efficiency, allocative efficiency and a new component we call marketing efficiency. The relative importance of these sources of efficiency...

Energy is a critical input in production and the main sources of energy in modern economies are exhaustible. Therefore sustaining aggregate consumption across generations requires reduction of the quantity of energy used per unit of output. Energy policies incentivize the deployment of new...

This paper considers the time path of prices for crop traits such as herbicide resistance, specifically whether they conform to Coase's conjecture that monopoly prices can't be sustained on durables. While property rights determine whether such traits are durables, prices for RR soybeans and Bt...

This study explores the role of rate and biases of technological change in the sustainability of an economy with an exhaustible resource. In order to achieve this goal, the mathematical concept of viability kernel is introduced as a sustainability indicator and necessary conditions for...