As progress has been made on tariff reduction by recent trade agreements, barriers to freer international trade arising from nontariff sources have become more prominent. Regulation of product quality and in particular food safety can be a major source of such barriers. Lowering them requires...

The three essays in this dissertation address issues pertinent to hypothetical bias in the contingent valuation (CV) mechanism. Empirical evidence gathered through several experiments conducted at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, is used to provide a better understanding of the cause...

This dissertation explores in one essay the modeling of quality management systems and in two essays the estimation of market power exertion. The first essay models the impact of food quality management systems on competitiveness and markets considering specifically credence attributes. The...

This study is intended to address the question of structural change in meat demand. Inverse demand systems are modified to accommodate a variant of the Smooth Transition Autoregressive (STAR) models, the Smooth Transition Regression (STR) models. Structural change has been a contentious topic in...

The analysis of consumer demands is limited by data availability. Typically, aggregate consumption and expenditure data are all that is available to draw conclusions based on the theory of individual consumer behavior. Such limitations are problematic as some demand systems possess non-linear...

This dissertation consists of three essays. They examine diverse economic phenomena, but they are bound by a need to treat randomness effectively and practically. Each essay seeks to demonstrate enhanced capacity to effectively and practically treat randomness in specific problems of data...

v. 1. pt. 1. Agricultural production (p. 3-741) -- v. 1. pt. 2. Marketing, distribution and consumers (p. 745-1209) -- v. 2. pt. 1. Agriculture and its external linkages (p. 1213-1686) -- v. 2. pt. 2. Agricultural and food policy (p. 1689-2249) -- v.3 Agricultural Development: Farmers, Farm...

Front cover; Handbook of Agricultural Economics. Agricultural Development: Farmers, Farm Production and Farm Markets; Copyright page; Introduction to the Series; Contents of the Handbook; Contents of Volume 3; Part 1: Introduction; Overview; Part 2: Human Resources and Technology Mastery; Chapter...