In 1998 the European Union placed a moratorium on the planting of transgenic crops within its borders. The resulting ban on biotech crops has led to the current trans-Atlantic trade dispute between the United States and the EU. At the heart of this dispute is the issue of consumer acceptance....

This paper develops a decision support method that integrates measures of achievement in the economic, environmental, and social aspects of farming. The decision support method combines multiple attribute decision making (MADM) with fuzzy logic. The fuzzy MADM model fully ranks decision...

The purpose of this study is to evaluate potential changes in the length of product life cycles in the US seed corn industry. We use the observed survival time on the market for hybrids sold during 1997-2009 to conduct a survival analysis. Our empirical results show that the expected lifetimes...

Multivariate probit analysis of BMP adoption, based on Louisiana sugarcane producer data, indicates that education and cost-sharing programs are effective means of increasing adoption rates. Results also indicate that contemporaneous correlation exists within and between management measures,...

This paper develops an option value model to examine the extent to which output price uncertainty creates incentives to adopt two interrelated components of site-specific technologies sequentially. It analyzes how the impact of uncertainty on the sequential adoption decision differs across...

A model of a (convex) technology of representative and non-representative firms in a heterogeneous sector is presented in non-parametric and parametric versions. The heterogeneity is specified with error terms. The models including a non-parametric distribution of the errors can be estimated...

Several criteria that produce rankings of risk management alternatives are evaluated. The criteria considered are Value at Risk, the Sharpe ratio, the necessary condition for first degree stochastic dominance with a risk free asset, and the necessary condition for second degree stochastic...

This paper evaluates the impact of increasing concentration of the livestock sector on the economic welfare of rural Illinois. A pooled time-series, cross-sectional model is developed to study the dynamics of structural changes in hog production for the period 1981-1997. The model tests the...

Since the first half of the 20th century, the input-output (IO) table has been the backbone of much empirical work used to support policy analysis and develop economy-wide models. The need for accurate, up-to-date IO tables is thus essential for establishing the validity of the empirical work...

The outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) in 1997 has resulted in significant losses to Taiwan's hog industry which was the most important industry in Taiwan's agricultural sector at that time. Hog farmers have suffered great losses due to the cost of slaughtering infected hogs and reduced...