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...

This paper applies production theory to define a new set of inputs for U.S. households for thepost-war II period, tests the new inputs to see if they support a complete household-demandsystem, and reports a new social cost-of-living index. The data support a demand system withnine major input...

This paper examines the impact of public and private agricultural research andextension on agricultural total factor productivity at the state level. We test the hypothesis thatthe composition of agricultural experiment station funding—share of funding from impact offederal competitive grants...

This paper presents new econometric evidence on state government’s demand for resources to support local agricultural experiment station research. The econometric model consists of a complete-demand system covering four major resource sources, and it is fitted to annual observations on 48...

This paper examines immigration trends and economic impacts of immigration on the Midwestover the 1990s, especially for rural and agricultural labor markets and places them in contextrelative to changes in California, Florida, and Texas and the whole United States. The 1990swas a period of rapid...

This paper addressed the puzzling resistance of Presidents of southern African countries to food aid in 2002, given near certain starvation and long-term negative health effects of malnutrition of their constituents. First, I show that NGOs led by Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth are...

Genetically modified (GM) foods have caused many controversies. One important controversy relates to tolerance?the impurity rate that is tolerated before a commodity must be labeled as genetically modified. Currently, the United States does not have a specific tolerance or threshold level for GM...

Public debate continues over whether the United States should regulate genetically modified (GM) foods by imposing a mandatory labeling policy. This paper develops a model that shows that a voluntary GM-labeling policy results in higher welfare than a regulated mandatory GM-labeling policy, if...

Two interested parties dominate the current debate on genetically modified (GM) foods: environmental groups and agribusiness companies. For the average consumer to arrive at an informed decision on these new foods, they must rely on information from interested parties. Unfortunately, information...