This paper addressed the puzzling resistance of Presidents of southern African countries to food aid in 2002, given near certain starvation and long-term negative health effects of malnutrition of their constituents. First, I show that NGOs led by Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth are...

Genetically modified (GM) foods have caused many controversies. One important controversy relates to tolerance?the impurity rate that is tolerated before a commodity must be labeled as genetically modified. Currently, the United States does not have a specific tolerance or threshold level for GM...

Public debate continues over whether the United States should regulate genetically modified (GM) foods by imposing a mandatory labeling policy. This paper develops a model that shows that a voluntary GM-labeling policy results in higher welfare than a regulated mandatory GM-labeling policy, if...

Two interested parties dominate the current debate on genetically modified (GM) foods: environmental groups and agribusiness companies. For the average consumer to arrive at an informed decision on these new foods, they must rely on information from interested parties. Unfortunately, information...

The objective of this paper is to develop an optimal incentive system for multitaskingscientists in universities or professors under repeat contracting. With the aid of a principalagentmodel under repeat contracting, we show that (i) when a second task is assigned to aprofessor and the two tasks...

The objective of this paper is to identify the impact of public and private agriculturalresearch on multi-output multi-input profit maximizing decisions of Midwestern farmers. The mainhypothesis is that investments in public and private R&D shift outward the supply curves for cropand livestock...

The chapter focuses on household production theory and models for non-agriculturalhouseholds, largely in developed countries. The objectives of the paper are: (1) to presentseveral types of microeconomic models of household decision making and highlight theirimplications for empirical food...

New experimental economic methods are described and used to assess consumers'willingness to pay for food products that might be made from new transgenic and intragenicgenetically modified (GM) traits. Participants in auctions are randomly chosen adult consumersin major US metropolitan areas and...

The USDA is attempting to shift more research funds into competitive grants involving collaborationacross disciplines on large projects. This type of research structure raises a host of information andincentive issues. The objective of this paper is to shed new light on principal-agent problems...