Deceiving someone in our everyday lives is a moral failing, one that we are adept at detecting and quick to judge in the words and actions of others. In our professional lives as economic scientists we are also quick to judge experimental procedures as deceptive, but we have problems...

We present a semantic and textual analysis of the first two chapters of the Wealth of Nations to elucidate the meaning of several of Adam Smith’s key ideas, including “the necessaries and conveniences of life,” “power of exchanging,” and “the division of labour.” Using the...

We experimentally compare first-price auctions and multilateral negotiations after introducing horizontal product differentiation into a standard procurement setting. Both institutions yield identical surplus for the buyer, a difference from prior findings with homogeneous products that results...

This study examines issues that arise when modeling risk associated with fed cattle production. While research concerning crop yield and revenue risks are numerous, studies focusing on production risk in livestock are much less frequent. The first essay evaluates the relationship among four...

Government programs that restrict production and increase prices to particular groups of producers have a long history in the United States. The purpose of this research is to analyze the implications of such a program for peanuts in three independent essays. The first essay focuses on the...

This research extends the literature on the revealed preference analysis of macroeconomic aggregates in multiple ways. The relevance of recent methodological changes in data construction is our first topic, as Varian's (1982, 1983) nonparametric tests are run on U.S. consumption series built...

This dissertation studies the demand for imported and domestic demand models for meat and livestock. The first essay focuses on the separability between import and domestic meat demand and the performance of static versus dynamic models of consumer behavior. A new dynamic system of demand...

This dissertation includes three essays that consider the role of quality variation within agricultural production when consumers are heterogeneous in their preferences for quality. The first essay, 'The Welfare Benefits of USDA Beef Quality Certification Programs,' estimates the consumer...

My dissertation is titled 'Creating the Hot Hand Effect with a Grand Prize.' It develops a theory of how the addition of a grand prize for performance in a sequence of tournaments affects agents' effort and participation decisions. The theory's predictions are empirically tested with data from...