As US investment in food processors abroad grows, understanding the factors causing this growth is critical to US trade and investment policy. This study uses an ownership / location / internalization approach in finding market size and trade openness important determinants of US foreign direct...

Contracting directly between produce shippers and retailers is growing in importance. Retailers seek to obtain reliable supplies, while reducing their reliance on recurring market transactions. Producers seek stable prices and market access. These private transactions diminish spot market...

This paper examines the rationale underlying periodic price promotions, or sales, for perishable food products by supermarket retailers. Whereas previous studies explain sales in a single-product context as arising from informational, storage cost, or demand heterogeneity, this study focuses on...

Existing empirical studies do not provide a unifying explanation for retail price fixity. However, economic hysteresis, or the persistence of an economic phenomenon after its initial cause has disappeared, offers a general explanation. Estimates of an empirical model of retail-price hysteresis...

Proposals for reform of the federal multiple-peril crop insurance program for specialty crops seek to change fees for catastrophic (CAT) insurance from a nominal fifty-dollar per contract registration fee to an actuarially sound premium. Growers argue that this would cause a significant...

"Commodity promotion" consists of many activities, each designed to contribute to a consumer's product knowledge or influence tastes. However, both knowledge and tastes are unobservable, or latent, variables influencing demand. This paper specifies a dynamic structural model of fresh fruit...

Revenue insurance represents an important new risk management tool for agricultural producers. While there are many farm-level products, Group Risk Income Protection (GRIP) is an area-based alternative. Insurers set premium rates for GRIP on the assumption of a continuous revenue distribution,...

Many attribute the rise in obesity since the early 1980's to the overconsumption of fast food. A dynamic model of a different-product industry equilibrium shows that a firm with market power will price below marginal cost in a steady-state equilibrium. A spatial hedonic pricing model is used to...

This study applies a latent class estimation technique to a panel of A.C. Nielsen fruit-consuming households to define price, advertising, and promotion responsiveness segments. Ex post analysis of these segments finds significant demographic differences among them, suggesting that...

The Fugi apple variety is relatively new in the U.S. As a new product, questions concern the relative impact of consumer learning by experience, by variety-specific promotion, or by generic apple promotion. Estimates show each to have a positive impact. Changes in producer surplus provide a...