The objective of this paper is to empirically examine the relationship between changes in per capita manufacturing employment, manufacturing earnings per worker and human capital investment in nearly 3,000 U.S. counties over the period 1980-90. Two key hypotheses are tested: 1. Communities in...

This study investigates specific changes in farming practices aimed at reducing wind erosion from cropland in the inner Mongolia Plateau, China, and incorporates the value of dust reduction in downwind regions into a formal cost-benefit framework, both from the farmer's perspective and society's...

If a cumulative density function estimated from dichotomous choice data has an unrealistically fat right-hand tail, mean willingness to pay (WTP) will be overestimated. Truncating the range of integration results in a lower-bound estimate of the true mean WTP. A normalization procedure proposed...

In a split-sample contingent valuation study of willingness to pay (WTP) for food safety improvements, the dichotomous choice (DC) elicitation method consistently generated much larger estimates of WTP than did a continuous method. Little or none of these differences was due to bias introduced...

A bioeconomic model of livestock production from wind-erosive rangelands is developed and optimized. Equations of motion capture the impact of topsoil stock on forage productivity and the protective effect of forage stock on soil loss from wind erosion. For overgrazed wind-erosive rangelands, a...

This paper analyzes technical efficiency of limited-resource farms operating in a sub-tropical environment (Province of Misiones, Argentina). Property rights over land, the degree of market exposure and food support programmes are three institutional variables that are hypothesized to lead to...

An empirical analysis reveals that US states with a more highly educated population have better environmental conditions, after controlling for income and industrial composition. The strategy of raising human capital stocks to maintain or improve environmental quality is proposed as a...

The purpose of this research is to investigate factors impacting farmers’ decisions to engage in multifunctional activities, which are hypothesized to enhance the sustainability and prosperity of farms and their communities. To achieve this research goal, I will break it up into two specific...