My dissertation research is composed of three essays to investigate the role of procurement contracting, market structural features, and market participants¡¦ behavior as determinants of the implications of contracting for spot price determination, market segments, and welfare effects. A key...

Knowledge plays an important role in firm decision making as it involves the selection of technological systems and understanding and executing technologies that are implemented. Knowledge management therefore is a learning behavior which is undertaken to acquire additional knowledge and improve...

Commodity futures can supply fair investment return and unique diversification benefits to a portfolio manager. The relative performance between commodity futures and traditional financial assets is varied with business and market conditions. In general, commodity futures are negatively...

This study analyzed a pilot insurance program for pastures, rangeland, and forage called Rainfall Index (RI-PRF). It is designed as a risk management tool to insure against declines in the accumulated rainfall index within a geographic grid. Although conceptually RI is an easy to understand risk...

Motivated by several contemporary problems existing in U.S. agriculture, this thesis investigates three particular issues concerning different aspects of agricultural contracting between growers and processors. Specifically, the first essay investigates the relationship between the use of...

In my first essay I report results from an analysis where representative methodsof estimation from the Classical and Bayesian approaches to statistical inference areempirically compared. The chosen Classical methods are based on Least Squares andMaximum Likelihood and the chosen Bayesian method...

The objective of this study is to determine factors influencing the Best Management Practice (BMP) adoption decisions of farmers within 17 counties in Southeastern Pennsylvania. Specifically, the land-based characteristics of adoption are analyzed along with the spatial distribution of BMP...

ABSTRACTSTaxes on environmental externalities have long been recognized in the economics literature as a cost-effective mechanism for reducing the costs of environmental degradation. However, in recent years there has been substantial interest in other possible benefits from environmental taxes,...

Traditionally, information collection for water quality management has been focused on biological data to describe environmental conditions, and stressor-condition-response relationships. While this kind of information is essential, other types of information e.g., economic information about the...

The dissertation consists of two major components on the topic of environmental valuation using spatial hedonic pricing models.The first component deals with the specification of a spatial hedonic model. The focus is on how to include the spatial effects of observed house prices into a hedonic...