The paper analyzes the extent to which ignorance of heteroskedasticity or its inadequate modeling would result in misleading statistical inferences about crop yield distribution. We follow the "detrending mean yield approach" in which we model the conditional mean yield using a panel data model....

Low-input farming practices in many parts of the developing world have pushed cultivation onto marginal lands. Sustainability of already fragile ecosystems is threatened. Farmers place a high priority on satisfying subsistence food needs with on-farm production. Population pressure is high...

This paper examines the role of overconfidence in explaining farmer crop insurance purchasing decisions. The authors hypothesize that overconfidence could influence the participation decision and test this hypothesis. The preliminary results indicate that farmers are overconfident; however, the...

Understanding the relationship between soil fertility dynamics and crop response is conceptually appealing. Even more appealing is comprehension of the spatial and temporal heterogeneity of these connections over a production surface and across seasons. Knowledge of these interactions is...

In this study we evaluate the effect of annual productivity growth in agriculture over the 1991-2001 period on poverty in eleven developing countries. We compare this with the optimal pattern of productivity growth of comparable cost with the sole goal of maximizing poverty reduction. This...

Economic analysis of weather risk often depends on accurate assessment of the probability (P) of tail quantiles (Q). Extreme value theory can provide a promising estimation of the tail part risk and this paper intends to apply the extreme value model to estimate the tail risk on India excess...

This study examines price dynamics in the U.S. and Canadian hard red spring (HRS) and durum wheat markets. Using monthly prices for 1979-2002, we adopt Johansen cointegration tests and a vector error-correction (VEC) model. The results show that U.S. hard red winter (HRW) and Canadian HRS are...

Since its first detection in the North Central region in July 2000, the soybean aphid (Aphis glycines Matsamura) has caused considerable loss in soybean (Glycine max L.) yield, bean quality, and producer income. Discovered first in Wisconsin and then in adjoining states, it is currently...

Food price elasticities and flexibilities are widely used in agricultural policy and program analyses. Most agricultural economists take the reciprocal of a directly estimated elasticity, or more rigorously the inversion of an elasticity matrix at the retail level, as flexibility measures....

The consumption of multi-ingredient foods is increasing across the globe as consumers spend less time preparing meals. Traceability is now extensively used to reduce information imperfections in food markets and recent EU law suggests it will be implemented for manufactured meals as well. We...