We examine the choice of efficient decision rules in a budget-balanced organization. The organization awards a scarce ``project'' to the organization member who values it most, and redistributes some surplus from the project among all remaining members. An auction-based allocation rule tends to...

In modern U.S. agriculture, a tenant typically contracts with more than one landlord, although most of the past literature has focused exclusively on bilateral contracts with a single tenant and a single landlord. We argue that, in the presence of contractual externalities under which the...

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We examine interactions among explicit and implicit contracting practices for a sample of 385 intermediaries in California fruit and vegetable markets. Explicit practices are measured with an indicator for the existence of a formal contract, and with indicators for various contract...

Live cattle are increasingly priced as an explicit function of U.S. Department of Agriculture yield and quality grades. Human graders visually inspect each slaughtered carcass and call grades in a matter of seconds as the carcass passes on a moving trolley. We examine whether there is systematic...

We study incentives for information sharing (about uncertain future demand for final output) among agricultural intermediaries in imperfectly competitive markets for farm output. Information sharing always increases expected grower and consumer surplus, but may reduce expected intermediary...

This paper examines the motivations underlying the government's choice of particular policy mechanisms for subsidizing agriculture. The analysis suggests that policies involving overproduction by relatively high-cost producers might arise from the perceived connection between the existence of...

We hypothesize that imperfect quality measurement in contracts for fresh fruits and vegetables results in a moral-hazard problem, and that the final price of the produce provides additional information regarding quality. As a consequence, growers are not shielded from all price risk. This...