The revised Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS2) mandates that cellulosic biofuels be part of the liquid transportation fuel mix and contribute to reducing our carbon footprint. Unfortunately, since no commercial cellulosic biorefinery exists and cellulosic biomass production is typically smaller...

We employ a multi-region computable general equilibrium model of the world economy to estimate changes in worldwide food insecurity that result from the imposition of the U.S. Renewable Fuels Standard.

Replaced with revised version of paper 07/18/10.

How might increases in commodity prices, along with the acreage reduction mandated in the 2008 Farm Act, impact the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP)? Modeling Strategy The Likely To Bid (LTB) model “restarts” the CRP from scratch. Uses National Resources Inventory data to find parcels...

The emerging biofuel sector has drawn great interest as an alternative source of fuel for transportation. The expansion of biofuels greatly impacts world agricultural markets, since currently, the primary feedstocks for ethanol and biodiesel production are field crops and their derived products....

With the increasing research interests in biofuels, global implications of biofuels production have been generally examined either in a partial equilibrium (PE) or general equilibrium (GE) frameworks. Though both of these approaches have unique strengths, they also suffer from many limitations...

We present designs for optimal contracts to solve the investment hold-up problem for perennial crops for the biofuel industry. A fixed-price contract is ex-ante efficient but renegotiation-proof for a limited range of discount parameters. A perfectly- indexed contract is both renegotiation-proof...