Relative performance schemes such as tournaments are commonly used in markets for a variety of livestock and processing commodities, while explicit versions of these schemes are rarely used in markets for fresh fruits and vegetables and specialty grains. We show how contracts for these latter...

NA

We examine the choice of efficient decision rules in a budget-balanced organization. The organization awards a scarce ``project'' to the organization member who values it most, and redistributes some surplus from the project among all remaining members. An auction-based allocation rule tends to...

Not Available.

We study business organization and coordination of specialty-market hog production using a comparative analysis of two Iowa pork niche-marketing firms.  We describe and analyze each firm's management of five key organizational challenges: planning and logistics, quality assurance, process...

Participants in U.S. markets for live cattle increasingly rely on federal grading standards to price slaughtered animals. This change is due to the growing prominence of ﾓgridﾔ pricing mechanisms that specify explicit premiums and discounts contingent on an animal's graded quality...