We exploit variation in the timing of specialty crop insurance supply to different crops and counties in California to assess its effect on output as decomposed into yield and harvested acreage. Four woody-perennial crops and one field-annual crop are used to represent this effect. We find that...

The prospect of climate change has aroused growing interest in the influence of climate and water scarcity on agricultural production. Many studies continue to aggregate disparate crops when modeling irrigation choices. That approach confounds the crop-specific effects of climate and water...

This paper integrates economic and physical models to assess how federal crop revenue insurance programs might affect land use, cropping systems, and environmental quality in the U.S. Corn Belt region. The empirical framework includes econometric models that predict land conversion, crop...

This paper examines the causes of spatial inequalities in economic development across rural America. A theoretical model is developed to analyze interactions between location decisions of firms and households as they are affected by natural endowments, accumulated human and physical capital, and...

This paper quantifies the effects of the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) on farmland and developed land prices. Results show that the CRP increases farmland and developed land prices by 1.8% and 0.6%, respectively, on national average, with the largest increases in the Mountain, Southern...

In the U.S., urban sprawl and the rise in obesity rates have been two powerful trends during the latter half of the 20th century. Previous empirical work has found that obesity rates are influenced by labor market outcomes that are fundamentally shaped by the spatial pattern of developed land....

The Federal Agriculture Improvement and Reform Act (FAIR) of 1996 ended commodity specific subsidies and resulted in a significant shift in corn and soybean production in 1997. While conservation compliance improved the environmental health of the Central U.S., changes in production due to the...

This paper examines equilibrium properties of local jurisdictions implied by the Tiebout-style model. A set of equilibrium conditions are derived from a general equilibrium model of local jurisdictions. The conditions are parameterized and empirically estimated in a two-stage procedure. The...