Opportunistic behavior in crop insurance can arise due to asymmetric information between producers and the Federal Crop Insurance Corporation. Producers who insure fields using transitional yields based on county average yields or who select options such as buy-up coverage or revenue insurance...

We analyze growth and diversification of U.S. dairy farms by examining changes in ten size cohorts and new entrants through three successive censuses. We reject Gibrat’s law and the mean reversion hypothesis of growth. Growth rates appear bimodal where the smallest and largest farm cohorts...

Biofuels, as alternative transportation fuels, are now being used globally. Taking advantage of in-state feedstock supply is an efficient way to stimulate in-state biofuel industries and the local economy. This paper uses several models to estimate supply equations for major biofuel feedstock...

Dynamic effects of health and inter-state and inter-industry knowledge spillovers, total factor productivity (TFP) growth and convergence in U.S. agriculture are examined using recently developed procedures for panel data and a growth accounting model. Strong evidence is found to support the...

The hypothesis of induced innovation has been empirically tested in many ways, using a wide variety of data and test periods for many industries in many countries. However, each test has maintained the hypothesis that the relative marginal cost of developing and implementing technologies that...

Recent consolidation in agriculture has shifted production toward fewer but larger farms, reshaping business relationships between farmers, processors, input suppliers, and local communities. We analyze growth and diversification of U.S. corn, wheat, apple, and beef, farms by examining...

The hypothesis of induced innovation is tested for U.S. agriculture using a high-quality state-level panel data set and three disparate testing techniques – time series, direct econometric, and nonparametric. We find little support for the hypothesis. That conclusion is robust across testing...