The declining share of beef in total U.S. meat consumption has motivated industry-wide efforts to improve average beef quality through more effective coordination among the various market participants. Increased use of explicit "grid" pricing mechanisms over the last decade represent initial...

We examine agricultural contracting parties' incentives to employ quality measurement. Quality measurement will be used if on-farm production of ``quality'' is sufficiently cheap, and quality measurement sufficiently informative. We qualitatively test these predictions with empirical observation...

This paper estimates an agency model of contracts used in California's processing-tomato industry. Model estimation proceeds in three stages. We first estimate growers' stochastic production possibilities, and then, for a given vector of preference parameters, compute an optimal compensation...

This article examines motivations underlying the government's choice of alternative policy mechanisms for subsidizing agriculture. Optimal policies are analyzed for three government objectives: one where the government wishes to ensure a minimum level of net income for all farmers, a second...

We study incentives for information sharing among agricultural intermediaries in imperfectly competitive markets for farm output. Information sharing always increases expected grower and total surplus, but may reduce expected intermediary profits. Even when expected profits increase with...