In developing agricultures, past research has suggested an inverse relationship between farm productivity and size. The raw data from China show such an inverse relationship. However, the inverse relationship disappears after we instrument for land area using the fact that one of the objectives...

The paper presents an econometric model of dynamic agricultural input demand functions that includes research based technical change and autoregressive disturbances and fits the model to data for a set of state aggregates pooled over 1950-82. The methodological approach is one of developing a...

The objective of this article is to provide new empirical evidence on landlord-tenant choices of share versus cash-rent contracts in U.S. agriculture. The focus is on the contribution of explanatory variables that represent transaction costs, risk-sharing incentives, or both. An empirical model...

This paper examines methods frequently used by agricultural economists to measure the cost of farm labor, including operator and other unpaid, and to provide insights for improving them. The tradition is broken of treating labor and management separately, and labor is defined as encompassing all...

This article presents econometric estimates of the adult working-age male hazard function of interstate migration fitted to data obtained from migration decisions of adult males over a twenty-year period. The results show a strong negative effect of the real wage difference between origin and...

State crop, livestock, and aggregate agricultural total factor productivity (TFP) data, 1950-82, are examined for evidence of convergence to a single TFP level (sigma-convergence) or to a steady state rate of conditional convergence). Our empirical results do not support sigma-convergence but do...

A conceptual analysis of important issues in the organization and management of academic research is presented. Principal-agent theory is applied to derive optimal compensation schemes for scientists when they differ in ability, risk aversion, cost of effort, and reservation utility, and to show...

This article examines the impact of public agricultural research and extension on agricultural total factor productivity at the state level. The objective is to establish whether federal formula or competitive grant funding of agricultural research has a greater impact on state agricultural...

The recent literature on agricultural technology adoption shows that diffusion of new technologies varies significantly across space and time. Furthermore, puzzles exist about why some seemingly profitable technologies are not adopted, especially in livestock production. We employ a hazard or...

Controversy surrounds the introduction of genetically modified foods. One key issue relates to tolerance levels - the impurity rate tolerated before a commodity must be labeled. Currently, the United States has not defined a tolerance level for genetically modified foods. This paper uses data...