In this paper we fit stochastic frontier production functions to data for Chinese farmsgrouped into each of four regions—North, Northeast, East, and Southwest—over 1995-1999.These frontier production functions are shown to have statistically different structures, and themarginal product...

Malnutrition and food deprivation, which are concentrated in poor countries, have been along-term concern of economists, but as per capita income in developed countries has grown in the20th century, a new problem of over-nutrition leading to obesity has occurred. This paper developsmodels of...

This paper applies production theory to define a new set of inputs for U.S. households over the post-World War II period and uses newly constructed data on some of these inputs to fit a completehousehold-demand system, including inputs of women’s and men’s housework, and seven other...

This paper presents an economic perspective on intellectual property in plantmaterials, including its value, and summary information on the U.S. seed industry. It firstconsiders intellectual property rights--types, economic incentives that they bestow, and usesacross developed and developing...

This paper describes major external changes to the U.S. public agricultural researchsystem over 1988-1999; describes the reactions of the public agricultural research system to theexternal changes, specifying the innovations that have occurred over the last decade; and drawsconclusions about the present...

This paper presents a twoequationmodel of joint outcomes on an individual’sdecision to binge drink and on his/her annual labor market earnings. The primary data source isthe 1979 cohort of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79), 19791994.We showthat binge drinking behavior is quite...

In most environments, information is critical to consumer's decision making. Consumers have prior beliefs about quality and price of goods and services and obtain new information which is used to update these prior beliefs or to form posterior beliefs, i.e., Bayesian learning. New food products...

This survey reviews the existing literature, identifying the contribution of agriculture, schooling, and nutrition to economic growth and development over time and across countries. Particular attention is paid to the roles of improvements in agricultural technology and of the human capital of...