Extension marketing economists commit substantial resources to outlook and market analysis. Producers demand this information and use it to make production and marketing decisions. This study analyzes responses to a marketing survey of producers and extension marketing economists to discern...

The Cooperative Extension Service is an outstanding success story for education, but a model whose value is now in question. I focus on economic principles that apply to the question, "Is it time to end Extension, and if not, how can it be saved?" Six principles are identified: public goods,...

Evidence suggests that economists and agricultural economists have an unusual ability to create anxiety for university administration. Interviewers with university provosts and deans revealed support for faculty conducting relevant policy analysis, and discomfort with economists' participation...

The evolution of Cooperative Extension Service techniques used to teach decision making in a risk environment is examined. Interviews of selected Cooperative Extension economists indicate that research methods used to evaluate and describe risk are more complex than those used in extension...

Ethics and agriculture is a complex debate, but one in which agricultural economics students must be prepared to participate. There are many links between economics and ethic or moral philosophy. Classroom teaching tends to focus on discussion of issues involving behavioral ethics and disregards...

Crafting and executing strategy are key tasks to be carried out by a manager of an enterprise. Unit leaders are managers of an academic enterprise called a department. The objective of this paper is to provide an overview of information collected from interviews with unit leaders of departments...

Responses from a national survey of U.S. organic farmers indicated dissatisfaction with the extension service. An ordered probit model was used to identify the factors influencing effectiveness ratings of extension advisors by farmers. Study findings show that part-time, higher income organic...

The value of maintaining a minimum streamflow objective on average is lessened when there is considerable dispersion around the average. An integrated economic and hydrology model is presented which provides water policy planners with a way to accurately measure both the economic cost and...

Conventional wisdom implies that high discount rates accelerate depletion of tropical forests. As shown in this article, this result does not necessarily hold in a two-state variable model that distinguishes between primary and secondary forest stocks. In the context of a fixed concession period...

Fires are an important and natural component of forest ecosystems that affect the timber value of forests, and thus optimal rotations. Fire also affects amenity values provided by forests. This analysis examines the relationships among forest fire risk, timber values, and amenity values in a...