Farmers have to make key decisions, such as which crops to plant or whether to prepare the soil, before knowing how much water they will get. They face losses if they make costly decisions but do not receive water, and they may forego profits if they receive water without being prepared. We...

We analyze how to induce sellers to disclose food safety. With repeated interactions and safety correlated over time, cash transfers alone do not ensure disclosure. Perfect, but costly, testing ensures disclosure with a complex lottery that may be difficult to implement in practice. In contrast,...

Many food traits desired by consumers are costly to provide and difficult to verify. A complicating factor is that delivered quality can only be affected stochastically by producers and imperfectly observed by consumers. Markets for these goods will emerge only if supplying firms can be trusted....

Many food traits desired by consumers are costly to provide and difficult to verify. A complicating factor is that delivered quality can only be affected stochastically by producers and imperfectly observed by consumers. Markets for these goods will emerge only if supplying firms can be trusted....

This analysis utilizes farm-level data to evaluate the extent to which U.S. farm program benefits, particularly direct payments, bring about distortions in production. The issue is important in WTO negotiations and in the debate over the distortionary effects of decoupled ("green-box") payments....