Replaced with revised version of paper 07/15/08.

Recent lumber price volatility has been attributed to Spotted Owl Litigation and U.S.-Canada trade disputes. We use intervention analysis to explain daily lumber futures price volatility based on these events and other factors. The way information enters the market is shown to affect the speed...

Federal land programs, such as the Conservation Reserve, provide land amenities with public goods attributes. Private land trusts supply related amenities through their holdings of land and conservation easements. We analyze, in a unique county-level panel, the effects of the federal programs on...

 

In his 1973 paper, Steven Cheung discredited the "fable of the bees" by demonstrating that markets for beekeeping services exist and that they function well. Although economists heeded Cheung's lessons, policy makers did not. The honey program�-the stated purpose of which was to promote the...

Pollination by honeybees plays an important role in modern agriculture. Some crops are greatly dependent on honeybees (almonds, apples, avocados, blueberries, and cherries are examples) while the yields and quality of other crops are significantly enhanced by honeybee pollination. The importance...

Economic effects of public policy alternatives often are analyzed with simulation models. The value of simulation is enhanced when model parameters can credibly be estimated econometrically. But unrestricted estimation can be expected to result in problematic estimates, for example, estimated...

The U.S. peanut program has limited peanut production since 1949. Unlike the programs for grains, cotton, and rice, the 1996 FAIR Act left the peanut program largely intact. As before FAIR (and since 1977) the right to grow peanuts for the domestic edible market is embodied in marketing quota,...

Most financial asset returns exhibit volatility persistence. We investigate this phenomenon in the context of daily returns in commodity futures markets. We show that the time gap between the arrival of news to the markets and the delivery time of futures contracts is the fundamental variable in...