Economic analysis of chemical pesticide use has shown that the interactions between plants, pests, damage control technology and state of the ecosystem are important variables to be considered. Hence, a bio-economic model was developed for the assessment of Bt variety and pesticide-based control...

This paper analyzes changes in U.S. agricultural technology during 1960-1999, emphasizing the role of immigrant workers on farm mechanization. The rates and directions of biased technological change based on the induced innovation theory are compared before and after the passage of the...

The allocation of benefits from research and development of new herbicide uses is dependent on patent status. The agricultural chemical industry will preferentially invest in herbicide R&D that increases the use of on-patent herbicides from which a company can capture a price premium. The...

We analyze the non-pecuniary aspects of some crop biotechnologies taken from three farm-level surveys. We focus particularly on the phenomen on of part-whole bias, which is the empirical finding that the sum of the stated part-worths (the value of each nonpecuniary characteristic) is greater...

The debate about the "quasi" moratorium on the release of GMOs in the European Union is on going. One of the major arguments that were put forward to delay the release of new traits was the one for more information. In this contribution we compare the situation for Bt-maize from the 1995 and...

One prominent feature of the US biofuels sector is its reliance on mandates to enforce use. The performance of this policy tool has been mixed, with corn-based ethanol production successfully meeting targets but cellulosic ethanol falling well short of them. A crucial difference in this setting...

We investigate the role of risk and learning in biotechnology adoption, with an empirical focus on the adoption of Genetically Modified (GM) corn in the U.S. Corn Belt. Relying on the Kalman filter algorithm, a conceptual structural dynamic programming (DP) model is developed to capture the...

The adoption of new technologies by farmers may impact the environment, and hence affect consumer welfare. This channel of impact is seldom assessed in the literature, especially when the production technologies adopted are not labeled on the consumption goods, and as a result are not directly...

Risk is pervasive in developing country agriculture, and risk preferences are though to impact seed and technology choice. Empirical research on risk preferences and technology adoption typically only consider the risk preferences of a single household member. In this paper experimental...