Reverse share tenancy, wherein poorer landlords rent out land to richer tenants on shares, is a common phenomenon. Yet it does not fit existing theoretical models of sharecropping and has never before been modeled in the economics literature. We explain share tenancy contracts using an asset...

It is often difficult to determine the extent to which observed output gains are due to a new technology itself, rather than to the skill of the farmer or the quality of the plot on which the new technology is tried. This attribution problem becomes especially important when technologies are not...

The literature on economic growth and development has focused considerable attention on questions of risk management and the possibility of multiple equilibria associated with poverty traps. We use herd history data collected among pastoralists in southern Ethiopia to study stochastic wealth...

The relationship between price volatility and competition is examined. A theoretic, vector autoregressions on farm prices of wheat and retail prices of derivatives (flour, bread, pasta, bulgur and cookies) are compared to results from a dynamic, simultaneous-equations model with theory-based...

Buy-sell arrangements for the death of a co-owner may be funded with life insurance. The mechanisms and details of buy-sell arrangements were discussed. The decision whether to use life insurance was modeled using the expected utility theorem. State dependent utility was used since a surviving...

In 1996 Johannesson et al. published a paper in this journal entitled “The Value of Private Safety versus the Value of Public Safety.” Based on preliminary evidence from a hypothetical contingent valuation study, these authors argue that consumers behave as “pure altruists” and reject...

The major sources of variability in net farm income on New York dairy farms over the past 10 years are identified using Dairy Farm Business Summary records. The most important source of income variability is the fluctuation in milk prices, followed closely by year-to-year variation in the...

A pollution reduction program is designed where information about both techno logy and risk preferences is asymmetric. Program costs and the distribution of payments depend on the amount of information known to the policy maker. Empirically testable conditions for selfselection are derived; the...

Major sources of variability in net farm income on New York dairy farms over the past 10 years are identified using variance decomposition methods. The most important source of income variability is the fluctuation in milk prices, followed closely by year-to-year variation in the quantity of...