The present study formalizes and quantifies the importance of uncertainty, irreversibility, and managerial flexibility for investment in a corn-stover based cellulosic biofuel plant. Using a real options model, we recover prices of gasoline that would trigger entry into the market and compare it...

The present study formalizes and quantifies the importance of uncertainty for investment in a corn-stover based cellulosic biofuel plant. Using a real options model we recover prices of gasoline that would trigger entry into the market and calculate the portion of that entry trigger price...

This paper develops a model of spatial competition nesting the classical Zhang and Sexton (2001) duopsony and spatial monopsony in order to evaluate the effects of alternative stover market structures on stover prices, supply of biofuels, and firm profits. We show theoretically, as well as in an...

Policies that aim to mitigate water pollution from fertilizer use in agriculture include input-based and output-based policies. Both cost-effectiveness and the speed for policies to take effect are important for policy assessment. In this study, we found that fertilizer price policies cannot...

Government subsidies on electricity used for pumping groundwater by agricultural irrigators has long been suspected to be an important reason for overexploitation of aquifers in Mexico. We hypothesize that institutional arrangements that exacerbate non-excludability of groundwater also matter....

In Mexico, farmers only pay the cost of electricity used to pump groundwater from wells for groundwater consumption and also receive electricity subsidy from government. It causes the fact that farmers consume groundwater under the situation that private marginal cost is lower than social...

We estimate the cost of transporting corn and the resulting degree of spatial differentiation among downstream firms that buy corn from upstream farmers and examine whether such differentiation softens competition enabling buyers to exert market power (defined as the ability to pay a price for...