Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to use the DuPont expansion to examine those factors underlying differences in (rates of) return on different crop portfolios over space (ten regions) and time (1960-2004). The paper also estimates the impact of government payments on farmland values...

We build up from the plant level an “aggregate(d)” Solow residual by estimating every U.S. manufacturing plant's contribution to the change in aggregate final demand between 1976 and 1996. Our framework uses the Petrin and Levinsohn (2010) definition of aggregate productivity growth, which...

Several spatial econometric approaches are available to model spatially correlated disturbances in count models, but there are at present no structurally consistent count models incorporating spatial lag autocorrelation. A two-step, limited information maximum likelihood estimator is proposed to...

This article employs the superlative Fisher and Trnqvist indexes for exact decomposition of growth in nominal revenues and costs. The findings confirm the well-known result that these indexes very closely approximate each other, implying that the mathematically simpler and computationally easier...

StarLink disrupted the U.S. corn market during the 2000/01 marketing year as a result of inadvertent commingling. The potential, upper-bound volume of marketed StarLink-commingled corn from the 2000 crop located near wet and dry millers prior to October 1, 2000, is estimated at 124 million...

This study employs a national survey of over 3000 U.S. manufacturing establishments to explore associations between worker skill requirements and use of production and telecommunications technologies, work organization, and other management practices. Ordered probit equations show an empirical...

We estimate a CBS system model of U.S. derived demand for meat. We use this model (1) to examine relationships between three quality categories of beef and three other meats and (2) to simulate how taste shifts have affected demands for meats over time. We extend previous studies by...

To analyze U.S. consumers' brand choices for cheese purchases, we derive a set of discrete-choice models from dynamic utility maximization. ACNielsen Homescan Survey data on U.S. households is used to estimate a dynamic probit model for each of the top brands for cheddar, shredded, and sliced...

Crop insurance and hedging are two risk management strategies used by farmers to manage risk. Using a discrete choice model and farm-level data, this study investigates the factors influencing farmers' use of hedging and crop insurance as risk management strategies. In the case of crop...

Rapidly declining gasoline prices from their record high during the summer of 2008, while ethanol prices remained relatively high, made it difficult for many bio-fuel policy modelers to fully explain the impacts of U.S. bio-fuel policies on fuel prices. Using profit-maximization models for...