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...

The paper examines changes in employment and wage patterns, industrial restructuring, and foreign competition that affect opportunities of recent immigrants to the non-metropolitan Midwest, especially to Iowa. The focus is on food and kindred products where meat and poultry packing and...

This paper examines efficiency implications of national and local policies for fund allocation and management of agricultural research, which produce pure and impure public goods. The possibility is examined that competitive grants programs increase rent seeking activities by scientists relative...

Under the conservation-compliance program, most of the individual producers are forced to cut their soil erosion to 7 t per acre annually irrespective of the marginal cost of controlling soil erosion. In a system where coupons to a ton of soil loss were issued to producers and traded, the...

This paper formulates and estimates a structural intertemporal model of a woman’s household participating in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and her likelihood of being obese. We use an economic model of lifetime behavior in a finite life model to provide the structure of...

Mexico and the United States have a long history of substantial trade in cattle and beef. The enactment of a NAFTA, and the subsequent elimination of tariffs and non-tariff trade barriers, will alter that trade balance. In the short run, this will result in increased imports of feeder cattle...

Mexico and the United States have a long history of substantial trade in cattle and beef. The enactment of a NAFTA, and the subsequent elimination of tariffs and non-tariff trade barriers, will alter that trade balance. In the short run, this will result in increased imports of feeder cattle...