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...

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...

As part of 1996 legislation, the U.S. began paying farmers production flexibility contract payments designed to be somewhat decoupled from current production decisions. In the labor-leisure model, decoupled payments would be expected to only have a wealth effect, but coupled payments would be...

Participation in government programs has a mild impact on the economic well-being of U.S. farm households. Major factors that determine farm household prosperity are the primary operator's education level and ethnicity, education level of the spouse, and other characteristics such as forward...

The United States of America is an indebted nation in the early years of the new millennium, changing from $469 billion in 1973 to $14 trillion in 2010, as spending is justified on the basis that it promotes GDP growth which in turn increases societal benefits. Despite the benefits of debt, its...

The goal of this dissertation is to address the role of government payments in the allocation of off-farm labor through three essays. Government payments have been a part of agriculture since 1933 and at no time has the government stated a policy objective of decreasing the agricultural labor...

This thesis studies the off-farm labor supply decision of farm operators and their spouses in the United States. The data used in this study is from the Agricultural Resource Management survey, 2006. The objective of this study is twofold. First, to identify those factors that affect off-farm...

Farm operators and spouses have increasingly engaged in off-farm work in recent years. Many studies have analyzed the role of government payments; however, little is known about the impact of health insurance coverage. This study builds on previous literature by using copulas to test for...

Off-farm employment has been an integral part of the emerging structure of production agriculture in the South. Government farm program payments, farm structure, and strong non-farm economy have important impact on labor allocation, farm and non-farm labor, decision of farm operators. The...

According to Ricardian rent theory, the value of farm assets is equal to the discounted present value of future expected net rents from farm returns, and the discounted expected value of the land if converted to nonfarm development. Some recent research has considered modifying this standard...