One frequently proposed policy is to consolidate rural school districts in order to save money by obtaining economies of size. The effects of school district size on both expenditures and standardized test scores are estimated for Oklahoma. Results indicate that economies of scale with respect...

An equilibrium displacement model is developed and used to estimate the welfare impacts of government and industry-funded promotion programs, country of origin labeling (COOL), and the disease-driven, international bans on U.S. beef. The model goes beyond past studies by including the U.S....

Tobacco is notorious for being one of the most difficult commodities to grade. Here, we determine the implicit prices of various tobacco characteristics using a hedonic price model. The factors affecting the price received for burley tobacco include reputation of the producer, month of auction...

Training a neural network is a difficult optimization problem because of numerous local minimums. Many global search algorithms have been used to train neural networks. However, local search algorithms are more efficient with computational resources, and therefore numerous random restarts with a...

Price asymmetry in spatial fed cattle markets is investigated for three large markets (Texas Panhandle, Nebraska, and Colorado) and one small market (Utah). Little support is found for the notion that equilibrium prices for fed cattle are asymmetric between locations. However, adjustments to...

An educational production function is estimated using achievement test scores to proxy school output, with socio-economic characteristics and expenditures in various categories as inputs. The data are school district level expenditures. Unlike most past research, a correction is made for the...