This paper looks at some of the reasons why free trade has failed to improve the allocation of resources in developing countries, and considers the impact of trade liberalization on the Latin American region during the 1990 2000 period. Under liberalized trade, economic crises have grown in...

The comparative financial performance of Southern Plains and US farm businesses was analyzed for the 1987-1989 period. The results showed no significant differences between the profitability ratios of the two groups of farms, except in the $40,000 to $249,999 sales class, where US farms...

The argument that NAFTA will hurt US growers of horticultural crops because of increased Mexican exports was evaluated. The evaluation was based on the analysis of Mexico's potential physical production capacity and domestic demand for horticultural products, the nature of US import demand, and...

Expected effects from partially lifting tariff barriers on the Mexican agricultural sector are investigated using a restricted profit function (RPF) approach. Short-run and intermediate-run effects of the implementation of GATT minimum tariff provisions on Mexican agricultural trade are...

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...