In market-oriented economics, agricultural markets and marketing functions become increasingly important as the food system evolves. This paper focuses on how selected dimensions of markets and marketing functions can be studied and evaluated in Third World settings. The specific purpose of this...

Two powerful socioeconomic innovations are sweeping the nation, led by Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. and Starbucks Corp. These innovations both affect and are driven by profound labor market changes, but exactly how they affect self-employment or entrepreneurship has not been investigated. We examine...

A data set for U.S. counties that includes residence status of firm owners is used to assess whether per capita density of locally owned businesses affects local economic growth, compared with nonlocal ownership. The database also permits stratification of firms across different employment size...

Empirical models are developed and estimated to identify economic determinants of food manufacturing establishment growth between 1987 and 1993. Separate growth equations are estimated for states and counties at the three-digit SIC level. Significant agglomeration diseconomies are found to exist...

We identify the effects of alternative explanatory variables on the propensity of U.S. farmers to cease farming, with a particular emphasis on understanding the roles of off-farm employment and federal farm program payments. Conventional ordinary least squares analysis using all counties...