Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) aims to support investment in cellulosic biofuel refineries by mandating a floor on the amount of biofuels being consumed in every calendar year. Tradable Renewable Identification Numbers (RINs) is the market mechanism by which the mandates are to be met. But the...

Understanding how business cartels form and expand is foundational for developing sound deterrence strategies. Past work (i.e. Connor, 2005) has relied on net present value (NPV) methods to evaluate the streams of costs and benefits of forming or joining a cartel. While NPV adequately measure...

Agricultural markets often feature significant transport costs and spatially distributed production and processing which causes spatial imperfect competition. Spatial economics considers the firms’ decisions regarding location and spatial price strategy separately, usually on the demand side,...

This paper analyzes the optimal informative advertising and price policies of a monopolist who sells a new experience good over time to a population of heterogeneous buyers. Under certain conditions, the advertising rate first increases and then decreases over the marketing cycle with a peak...

Farmers and food companies need to assess their production and marketing strategies for nurturing business opportunities that will arise from the simultaneous increase in population and income of Hispanics in the United States. Previous studies on demand for meat products have not received much...

Slotting fees are fixed charges paid by food manufacturers to retailers for access to the retail market. The role of the practice and its effects on market efficiency are highly controversial. To date, the literature has focused on the effect of the practice on retail prices; however, slotting...

A unique approach using a biophysical growth model from the animal science literature is used to examine optimal contract cattle feeding behavior under alternative climatic conditions. The examination of incentives and outcomes in an unusually comprehensive contract parameter and behavioral...

This paper studies whether a seller achieves higher profits by providing consumers with information that allows them to distinguish between products from different countries, and how mandatory provision of such information impacts welfare. We analyze a model of multi-product monopoly with...