This dissertation proposes an optimal investment decision model that accounts for project irreversibility and price uncertainty. By specifying the cash flow as a dual profit function, the methodology admits hog and feed prices, rather than a composite cash flow, as the underlying stochastic...

Concerns in the United States meat industry about food credence attributes, such as environmental degradation, animal welfare and antibiotics usage in live animal production are forcing food suppliers to change marketing strategies. These changes have brought three issues into the forefront of...

There is considerable interest in projections of future productivity growth in agriculture. Whether one is interested in the outlook for global commodity markets, future patterns of international trade, or the interactions between land use, deforestation and ecological diversity, the rate of...

Since colonialism, Western development workers have tried to solve the "problem" of African pastoralism. Efforts to change the pastoralist situation have ranged from promotion of sedentary agriculture to importation of European dairy cows. But these well-intentioned programs gave little in the...

The existence of backwardation has attracted considerable attention in commodity markets because of the negative carrying cost puzzle. This dissertation estimates the causes of backwardation of stochastic prices in grain markets. The research extends existing research by considering local market...

An investigation into the performance of CBERA and GSP programs for agricultural commodities from CBI countries found that most of the growth in exports of preferenced goods is due to six commodities--live tree slips or cuttings, dasheens, fresh or dried pineapples, cantaloupes, frozen orange...

The current evidence on the empirical relationship between asset returns, trading volume, and open interest in futures markets is largely inconclusive, and the literature on the theoretical and empirical links between return volatility and volume and open interest are even more limited. The...

The U.S. pork industry is in the midst of substantial structural changes. Hog slaughter and hog production is being concentrated into fewer, larger hands. Meanwhile, hog prices have experienced unprecedented volatility, raising concerns about market power in the pork industry by policy makers,...

There is considerable interest in projections of future productivity growth in agriculture. Whether one is interested in the outlook for global commodity markets, future patterns of international trade, or the interactions between land use, deforestation and ecological diversity, the rate of...

The objective of this paper is to provide insights on the welfare distributional impact on consumer and producer welfare resulting from the development and implementation of a credence certification program in the U.S. pork sector. The certification program can provide various levels of tracking...