During the late 1990s a series of negative events occurred in the United Kingdom (UK) related to biotechnology. These events signaled potential risks associated with biotech foods and crops and were highly reported. According to the trust asymmetry hypothesis, such events ought to cause public...

The purpose of this paper is to examine the extent to which trust directly affects public support for biotechnology, particularly in applications to food production and genetic modification of crop plants. Unlike previous research in which trust is assumed to be exogenous, this paper posits that...

The rise of contract farming and vertical integration is one of the most important changes in modern agriculture. Yet the adoption and diffusion of these new forms of organization has varied widely across regions, commodities, or farm types. Transaction cost theories have done much in helping us...

If people think or expect that others are kind, ethical or fair, are they more likely to be kind, ethical and fair in their own judgments and behaviors? Answering this question is difficult because of the confluence of individual, institutional and other-regarding factors that affect ethical...

In this paper we propose a framework for assessing claims of unfairness by agricultural producers. By employing concepts from network exchange theory and considerations of power and dependency, we show that judgments about fairness can be made after considering the structure and context of the...

We consider whether participation in cooperative organizations known as Farm Bases correlates with a farmer's risk attitudes in China. Specifically, we seek to determine if farmers see cooperative-like organizations as a means of reducing risk or as a way of accessing riskier opportunities....

Because family and the beliefs and values of people are important aspects of economic institutions, family structure and functioning might affect the values of family members. Four specific types of values are relevant to economic performance: ethical values, moral values, democratic values, and...

We empirically test the effect of separating ownership and control and its interaction with farmer effort on farm success using USDA-ARMS data. We use a two-stage least squares approach and instrumental variables that proxy participation constraints to binding incentive contracts. We find the...

Purpose: We examine the role and importance of trust in a type of Chinese farmer cooperative organization called “Farm Bases,” considering the extent to which trust affects their performance and how the relationship between trust and Farm Base performance is affected by perceptions of risk...

While the growth of family firms is widely recognized as important to the prosperity of free-market economies (Family Enterprise USA, 2011), a growing body of stakeholder research finds that family business ethics is important to advancing a society's moral progress. Yet, due to limits in...