Because of the broad definition of a farm — which includes numerous small operations that produce little or no agricultural commodities in any given year — most farm households earn all of their income from non-farm sources. However, even those operating farms with substantial production...

U.S. policy makers often justify agricultural subsidies by stressing that agriculture is the engine of the rural economy. We use the increase in crop prices in the late 2000s to estimate the marginal effect of increased agricultural revenues on local economies in the U.S. Heartland. We find that...

U.S. policy makers often justify agricultural subsidies by stressing that agriculture is the engine of the rural economy. We use the increase in crop prices in the late 2000s to estimate the marginal effect of increased agricultural revenues on local economies in the U.S. Heartland. We find that...

The Kansas and Missouri economies grew during the spring of 2013. Employment growth was positive in both states, while their unemployment rates stayed flat. Residential real estate conditions continued to improve, and farmland values grew in the first quarter, but expectations for future incomes...

Innovations in the energy sector, particularly the extraction of natural gas from shale and tight gas formations using horizontal drilling and "fracking," have helped increase U.S. reserves of natural gas to an estimated 70 years' worth of supply. Some theories suggest such a boom leads to a...

The economic geography of the United States' energy landscape changed rapidly with domestic expansion of the natural gas sector. Recent work with smooth transition parameter models is extended to an establishment location model estimated using Poisson regression to test whether expansion of this...

The purpose of this research is to investigate factors impacting farmers’ decisions to engage in multifunctional activities, which are hypothesized to enhance the sustainability and prosperity of farms and their communities. To achieve this research goal, I will break it up into two specific...

To combat adverse selection, governments increasingly base payments to health plans and providers on enrollees' scores from risk-adjustment formulae. In 2004, Medicare began to risk-adjust capitation payments to private Medicare Advantage (MA) plans to reduce selection-driven overpayments. But...