Theil’s inequality index is used to measure convergence in 14 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries in terms of per capita income, per capita government and investment expenditures, and industrial employment. Results indicate that all four variables have...

The 1986 U.S. Grain Quality Improvement Act introduced an explicit, economic purpose for grades-that they transmit information about end use value-but provided little guidance about what factors to include in grades. We determined which quality characteristics best reflect the processed value of...

Produce growers in Kentucky, North Carolina, and Tennessee were surveyed in 2002 to gather information about their decision making in the areas of planting, postharvest handling, marketing, and expected changes. North Carolina has proportionately more respondents with large operations, and...

The role of farm dependence and size on rural economic growth is examined with data from 2,240 nonmetropolitan U.S. counties for the period 1990-1995. A simple neoclassical model of regional economic growth is set forth with a central question relating to the role of agriculture on rural...

The value of an innovative seed technology is estimated in a discrete stochastic programming framework for a representative farm in the northern Corn Belt. Temperature-activated polymer-coated seed has the potential to increase net returns by increasing yields due to early planting and use of...

We use international comparison data of Summers and Heston to trace the development of three regions in Western Europe: the countries currently outside the European Union (EEC), the EEC Center, and the EEC Periphery (Greece, Ireland, Portugal, and Spain). For each year during the period...

Using time-series data spanning three decades, we examine the determinants of sectoral migration in Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines. We used a principal-components algorithm to address the problems associated with trended and intercorrelated explanatory variables. Migration rates in the...

Since the farm financial crisis of the 1980s, Farm Credit System banks continue to merge and consolidate to enhance competitiveness. Two mixed-integer programming models of AgChoice Agricultural Credit Association (ACA), a recently merged ACA in Pennsylvania, were developed to determine the...

Data from the International Comparison Project are used to analyze the development of the real gross domestic products (GDPs) of the G-7 countries from 1950-1988. For the group as a whole, per capita GDP increased almost threefold in this period, whereas the inequality among the seven countries...