Why does the firm look the way it does? Why does it have the structures it has? In particular, what is the function of the board of directors? Many papers have tried, and failed, to link the board's structure to the performance of the firm. Might the board have an alternative rationale for...

Do direct payments alter operators' acreage decisions? The authors use an event study with individual-level data in a panel-data setting to examine how an exogenous change in direct payments affects individual farmers' production decisions. They track changes in acreage across time and examine...

A cost-function-based production model is used to represent patterns of input use and output production in U.S. agriculture, and the implied costs of induced reductions in risk from agricultural chemicals (“bad outputs”). We estimate and evaluate shadow values for these harmful outputs, and...

A theoretical model of farmland valuation is developed to explicitly account for three effects of urban sprawl: conversion of farmland to urban uses, effect on agricultural returns, and speculative effect as represented by farmland conversion risk. This model is estimated using county-level data...

Adoption rates of 19 dairy technologies, management practices, and production systems (TMPPS) are estimated for the US for 2005 and 2010 and, in cases where data are available, 1993 and 2000. Logit models are estimated to determine types of farms most likely to use each TMPPS. TMPPS experiencing...