Our context involves N Cournot oligopolists producing M products at constant marginal costs when preferences are quasi-linear. We identify relationships between second moments of unit costs and second moments of firm-level production. For example, a larger variance in unit costs of a product...

When nonpoint source pollution is stochastic and the damage function is convex, intuition might suggest it is more important to control a nonpoint pollution source than a point source. Earlier research has provided sufficient conditions such that the permit price for a unit of ex-ante expected...

Based on the Ricardian rent theory, this study employs the variable profit function to analyze the determinants of Iowa cropland cash rental rates using county-level panel data from 1987 to 2005. Accounting for spatial and temporal autocorrelations, responses of local cash rental rates to...

Feeder animal prices depend on fed animal prices, the biological growth technology, and feed costs. In addition, daily maintenance costs can be avoided through accelerated feeding. These observations allow us to model optimal feeding under equilibrium feeder animal pricing. Our model enables a...

The decision to replant a fire blight-susceptible apple orchard is analyzed. Embedding the problem into an equilibrium framework facilitates the welfare analysis of changes in orchard survival probabilities arising from a ban on antibiotics use. We estimate the structural impacts and welfare...

Often, a single production process gives rise to a mass distribution of quality levels. If prices vary with quality, then input use is determined by interactions between the production-quality-input use relationship and the price-quality relationship. Using the dominance methods, the way in...

Industrial processing emphasizes information on and control over quality of raw materials. This letter establishes conditions under which informed control involves ensuring uniformity in inputs and increased uniformity encourages more extensive processing. The Boltzmannï¾–Shannon entropy...

Price-dependent loan agreements at low interest rates have sometimes been included in North American hog sector long-term marketing contracts. We show that a general form of this stipulation can be viewed as a hybrid between a forward rate agreement and a bundle of commodity spot options. In...