The economic and social development of nations relies on their population having physical access to services and employment opportunities. For the vast majority of the 3.4 billion people living in rural locations, this largely depends on their access to urban centers of different sizes....

This paper considers supply decisions by firms in a dynamic setting with adjustment costsand compares the behavior of an optimal control model to that of a rule-based system whichrelaxes the assumption that agents are explicit optimizers. In our approach, the economicagent uses believably simple...

From 1985 to 2002, most Federal conservation dollars going to farm operators have been to retire land from crop production. Yet most U.S. farmland (850 million acres) remains in active production. The Farm Security and Rural Investment (FSRI) Act of 2002 sharply increased conservation funding...

This paper analyzes why USDA's Environmental Quality Incentives Program has a high rate of contract withdrawals. Using a logit model we examine whether withdrawals are linked to: (i)farmers bidding for payments that are too low, (ii)a learning phase about the program, (iii)the types of...

The problem in estimating a social accounting matrix (SAM) for a recent year is to find an efficient and cost-effective way to incorporate and reconcile information from a variety of sources, including data from prior years. Based on information theory, the paper presents a flexible 'cross...