Grain transportation is one of the most important economic issues for grain producers in the Northern Plains. The reliance on export markets and the long distances to port position means that transportation costs have a significant effect on the price received by farmers. In the prairie region...

This study examines the effects that a cutback in production by Texas agricultural producers would have on the economic well-being of all producers and consumers in the stateÂ’s economy. To do this, a quadratic input-output model incorporating econometric estimates of final demand was...

The paper examines the relationship between the innovator's patenting and patent breadth decisions as well as how these two decisions affect, and are affected by, the innovator's ability to enforce her patent rights. An important feature of the model is that the entrant may be able, by his...

Carbon offset markets have been suggested as a cost effective means of reducing GHG emissions. This paper develops a model of heterogeneous emitters and producers to examine the consequences of non-compliance on the performance of the carbon-offset market. The analysis begins with the derivation...

In this paper, we show formally that cooperatives can possess an informational - and hence cost - advantage compared to For Profit Firms. This advantage is directly linked to the goal alignment between the cooperative and its members, and is influenced by the extent of income redistribution...

Innovating firms choose to patent their innovations when patenting allows the appropriation of more rents than do other forms of intellectual property protection (e.g., trade secrecy). The level of innovation rents that can be captured by the patent is mainly determined by the breadth of patent...

This paper introduces enforcement costs and farmer misrepresentation into the economic analysis of decoupled area payments. When enforcement is costly, complete deterrence of cheating is never optimal from an economic perspective. Misrepresentation changes the welfare effects of the policy...

The paper models the patenting behavior of the innovator/patent applicant who having invented a drastic product innovation decides on the optimal breadth of protection claimed. The patenting process is modeled as a sequential game of complete information. The patentee acts strategically and with...

This article explores the issue of cooperative growth from both an empirical and theoretical perspective. Using total assets as the measure of cooperative size, we present long-term, time-series data from seven of the largest regional agricultural cooperatives in Canada and the United States. We...

North Dakota and Minnesota are currently witnessing a renewal in the growth of cooperative enterprises. At the heart of this renewal lies the so-called New Generation Cooperative (NGC), a term that has been applied to the dozens of value-added processing, selected membership cooperatives that...