Our paper begins with a consideration of the causal relationships among productivity, farm structure, government farm payments and public investments in research and extension. We then empirically test key relationships for a relatively recent period (1960-96) in the history of agricultural...

The U.S. farm sector is characterized by a great deal of heterogeneity. One reason for the heterogeneity in farm sizes is the multiple objectives of producers, which in addition to profit‐making, include a high‐quality rural lifestyle. The traditional aggregate indicators capture the...

Because of policy interest in the size distribution of farms, there is an interest in understanding the causes of changing farm sizes. This paper addresses an overlooked issue in the literature on the determinants of farm size, namely, the empirical specification of farm size. We examine 5...