This paper develops a model of farmer decision-making to examine the extent to which uncertainties about the performance of site-specific technologies (SSTs) and about the weather impact the value of these technologies. The model uses the jointly estimated risk and technology parameters to...

The goal of this paper is to provide the U.S. dairy industry with elasticities of Japan's derived demand for imported cheese differentiated by source country of production. These estimates are then used to assess the relative competitiveness of cheese imported from the U.S. to cheese imported...

Many countries require labeling for GM food products. These countries often have different levels of genetic modification that they will tolerate before a food product must be labeled as genetically modified. For example, the European Union and Australia allow up to one percent of any ingredient...

We examine the role of information in farmers' decisions to adopt GM corn, and find that the set of influential information sources is substantially different in 1997 and 1998. Further, our results suggest that one high quality information source is more influential than the quantity of information.

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...

Replaced with revised version of paper 07/27/07.

This paper examines the ex-ante benefits of transgenic research on drought in eight developing countries, including the potential magnitude of private sector profits. The framework employs country-specific agroecological-drought risk zones and considers both yield increases and yield variance...

Tomato, cabbage and garden egg (African eggplant, or Solanum Aethiopicum) are important crops for small-scale farmers and migrants in the rural and peri-urban areas of Ghana. Genetic modification (GM) has the potential to alleviate poverty through combating yield losses from pests and diseases...

This paper identifies direct costs and opportunity costs of bio-safety regulation for four transgenic products in the Philippines: Bt eggplant, Bt rice, ringspot-virus resistant papaya, and virus resistant tomatoes. It finds that direct regulatory costs while significant, are generally smaller...

This paper introduces social learning into irreversible investment theory through parameter uncertainty, and shows that social learning could reduce parameter uncertainty to facilitate irreversible investment technology adoption. The theoretic model is tested by using household level data from...