Choosing the right set of new products to offer is a key driver of profitability. New products often share some design attributes with existing products, thus, firms need to decide which attributes to keep common and which to differentiate. We propose and empirically implement a new methodology...

A theory is developed that explains how stocks can crash without fundamental news and why crashes are more common than frenzies. A crash occurs via the interaction of rational and naive investors. Naive traders believe that prices follow a random walk with serially correlated volatility. Their...

Many recent models of crises involve games with small, anonymous players and finite action sets, such as whether or not to attack a currency or withdraw funds from a bank.  We show that such models, when repeated, do not yield recurring crises in the presence of a flexible class of payoff...

How did the floods of 2008 and other coincidental natural disasters affect the well being of Iowa’s households, businesses, and the governments they depend on?  State of Iowa officials have diligently compiled descriptions of the damages and counts of the commercial and household...

This study highlights the experiences of people who have recently moved to or from Van Buren County, Iowa. This report summarizes details about reasons for moving, community satisfaction, sources of information, age, education, housing, and income of the respondents. The purpose is to increase...

Demand for nonsolar energy and concern about the implications of fossil fuel combustion have encouraged examination of energy use associated with agriculture. The United States is a global leader in pig production, and the United States swine industry is centered in Iowa. Feed is the largest...

The FAPRI 2009 U.S. and World Agricultural Outlook presents projections of world agricultural production, consumption, and trade under average weather patterns, existing farm policy, and policy commitments under current trade agreements and custom unions. The outlook uses a macroeconomic...

Taking location as given, we study imperfect competition on a circular city. In Bertrand oligopoly, we identify price harmonics as a function of firm unit costs and locations. The sum of oligopoly profits is larger when costs and/or locations are more dispersed in the...

Iowa's Agritourism Industry members were surveyed for information on their operational characteristics.