Real options theory is employed to measure the value of investing in organic wheat production using precision agriculture technology. Results reveal that an option to wait until market uncertainty is resolved is valuable. Information obtained via precision agriculture technology is also valuable...

The ag-biotech industry underwent considerable consolidation in the last decade in part to take advantage of economics of scale and scope. The paper investigates the impact of such consolidation on inventive activity at the firm level. Careful attention is paid to the role of firm size,...

Empirical evidence from research on Bt maize in Kenya puts to rest most concerns raised against GMOs (not responding to farmers' needs, expensive, benefiting agro-business, risk of decreased biodiversity), but does indicate that contamination of local varieties is likely and buildup of insect...

Consumer attitudes towards genetically modified foods (GMFs) play a crucial role in the development of the technology. Both government and food manufacturers of agricultural products in the US and China are optimistic about the potential market for these foods. This paper compares two national...

Traditional measures of the benefits of technological change use producer prices. Consumer-oriented measures are more appropriate but they require knowledge of price impacts. They may diverge in the presence of distortions. This paper shows that in general equilibrium they are interrelated...

We investigate the temporal and spacial nature of productivity growth and its components in Chinese agriculture from 1980-1995 using nonparametric Malmquist procedures. The results indicate that the high rate of technical progress and deterioring efficiency performance coexisted in Chinese...

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.