An equilibrium displacement model of the world wool top industry is used to estimate the returns to the Australian wool industry from productivity improvements in farm production, in top making and in textile manufacturing. The returns to the industry from these different types of research and...

Faced with the task of reorganizing the largest agricultural research system in the world, officials in China are developing a strategy for reform. This paper investigates economies of scale and scope and other potential sources of improvements in the economic efficiency of crop breeding, an...

A two-stage model is developed to study food processing firms' brand advertising and its welfare effects on farmers in a duopsony/duoploy setting. In stage 1 firms compete to differentiate their products through brand advertising, and in stage 2 firms engage in quality competition. Farmers may...

We develop a simulation model to analyze the effects on U.S. milk markets of an Australia-U.S. free trade agreement. An important contribution to the literature is the derivation of explicit supply and demand relationships for milk components, which allows an analysis of long-term production,...

Replaced with revised version of paper 08/14/07.

In general, reported rates of return to agricultural R&D are high, but questions have been raised about upward biases in the evidence. Among the reasons for this bias, insufficient attention to attribution aspects-matching of research benefits and costs-is a pervasive problem, the magnitude of...

Replaced with revised version of paper 07/10/09.

Some have suggested that the US food stamp program (FSP) should be revised with a view to combating obesity among the poor. In this paper, we assess the likely impacts of allowing FSP participants to purchase only healthy foods when using food stamps. Our results indicate that FSP participants...