One prominent feature of the US biofuels sector is its reliance on mandates to enforce use. The performance of this policy tool has been mixed, with corn-based ethanol production successfully meeting targets but cellulosic ethanol falling well short of them. A crucial difference in this setting...

This paper analyzes economic issues that arise in devising a credible and enforceable system of identity preservation and labeling for genetically modified (GM) and non-GM products. The model represents three stages in the supply chain: farm production, marketing handlers, and final users. The...

When some input decisions can be made after price is realized, separation between production and hedging decisions still holds only under limited circumstances. Under the assumption of a restricted profit function that is quadratic in price, the optimal futures hedge of a risk-averse firm equals...

We address the issue of structural change in demand analysis. After a brief discussion of the major problems and questions that arise in this context, the main body of the paper is devoted to a review of analytical methods that are relevant to investigating structural change in demand. This...

The main objective of this paper is to test the hypothesis that consumer preferences for beef in the United States have been affected by structural change, which reduces to testing for parameter stability in estimated demand equations. To this end, alternative specifications of the demand...

In this article, the author reviews intellectual property rights (IPRs), with some emphasis on the protection of agricultural and life sciences innovations. The main institutional features of IPRs are first discussed, along with a brief historical background and an articulation of the main...

When lump-sum taxation is not feasible, decoupled transfers to farmers (which require raising government revenue) will entail welfare loss somewhere in the economy. Assuming the government's objective is to assure a given welfare level for farmers, we show that when decoupling is possible, free...

We derive a general elasticity representation of the necessary and sufficient conditions for direct weak separability of the utility function. Parametric restrictions required to implement the separability conditions are presented for three common demand systems: the Almost Ideal, Translog, and...