This paper develops an option value model to examine the extent to which output price uncertainty creates incentives to adopt two interrelated components of site-specific technologies sequentially. It analyzes how the impact of uncertainty on the sequential adoption decision differs across...

The goal of the TOPMARD project is to develop a model of agriculture and rural development to better understand the agronomic, ecological, economic and social dimensions of rural regions. The resulting model, (Policy Model of Multifunctional Agriculture and Rural Development) was built...

Agricultural economists need to evaluate their own research priorities. The main difficulty in doing so is to value the types of information generated by economic research. Bayesian decision theory provides a framework for valuing information, and the results of selected studies using this...

Methods are presented for evaluating the economic benefits of agricultural economics research (AER). Decision theory and economic surplus analysis are used to evaluate returns to five representative types of AER. Benefits stem from effects of AER on economic efficiency through reduced...

The QPLU$ Merino breeding project began in the early 1990s. The aim of the project was to demonstrate the efficiency of using a selection index to achieve breeding objectives. A number of selection lines were created from three strains of Merino sheep. During the ten-year course of the project,...

Standard deterministic analysis of agricultural and biofuel policies can yield incomplete or misleading results. Stochastic analysis is especially important when policies have asymmetric effects and when there is intrinsic interest in uncommon events or the distribution of possible outcomes. The...