Comparative hypotheses are statistically tested for a random sample of Texas producers who perceive themselves as profit maximizers and those who do not. Those who assert that they are in the cow-calf business primarily to maximize profits have on average larger herd sizes and acreage, they earn...

The curvature properties of the indirect utility function imply a set of refutable implications in the form of comparative static results and symmetric relations for the competitive firm operating under uncertainty. These hypotheses, first derived and empirically tested under output price...