direct payments spatial competition and farm survival in norway we argue that farm survival is influenced by neighboring farmers characteristics and in particular by the direct payments neighboring farmers receive the article shows empirically that these interdependencies are crucial for an assessment of the effects of direct payments on farm survival using spatially explicit farm level data for nearly all norwegian farms a spatial probit model is estimated to explain farm survival from 1999 to 2009 controlling for spatial farm interdependence we show that ignoring spatial interdependencies between farms leads to a substantial overestimation of the effects of direct payments on farm survival to our knowledge this article is the first attempt to empirically analyze the importance of neighboring interdependencies for the effects of direct payments on farm survival

gender wage gap across the wage distribution in different segments of the indian labour market 1983 2012 exploring the glass ceiling or sticky floor phenomenon abstractwomen s participation in the indian labour market is not only low but they are also engaged in low productivity and low paying jobs further the labour market is segmented by gender type of employment sector and location of residence this study makes an important contribution by examining gender wage gap in india across different segments of the labour market over the wage distribution using national level representative data spanning the period 1983 to 2012 the empirical results suggest that i the male female raw wage gap has declined over time across the wage distribution ii the gender wage gap attributable to differing returns to characteristics has increased over time and there is evidence of convergence of productive characteristics of men and women iii sticky floor rather than glass ceiling phenomenon is observed in all segments of the labour market and iv the adjusted wage gap suggests that women at the bottom of the distribution face higher discrimination than those at the t

evolution of the economics of agricultural policy agricultural economists helped develop farm programs to respond to the dire economic situation of the 1920s and 1930s some early authors appreciated that such policies created problems in markets for commodities and inputs over time our understanding of agricultural issues and policies has deepened through the application of improved models and tools of analysis to more extensive data we have developed better answers to old questions and have responded to changing policy instruments market contexts and policy concerns this article traces the evolution of our deepening economic understanding of the causes and consequences of agricultural policy

farm growth and survival econometric evidence for individual farms in upper austria this article investigates survival and growth of more than 50 000 upper austrian farm households within a maximum likelihood sample selection framework the results suggest that age schooling and sex of the farm operator size of the farm family and off farm employment status as well as initial farm size significantly influence farm growth and survival the present study provides support for the notion of a disappearing middle in the size distribution the process of polarization is closely related to the off farm employment status of farms correcting for sample attrition bias is important when analyzing the performance of part time farms

agricultural payments and land concentration a semiparametric spatial regression analysis over the last twenty years both crop production and agricultural payments have shifted toward larger operations this study examines whether payments from federal farm programs contributed to increased concentration of cropland and farmland using zip code level data constructed from the microfiles of the 1987 2002 agriculture censuses we examine the association between government payments per acre and subsequent growth in land concentration a semiparametric generalized additive model gam controls for location and historical concentration sales per acre and ratio of cropland area to zip code area findings indicate both with and without nonparametric controls government payments are strongly associated with subsequent concentration growth copyright 2008 oxford university press

forecasting international tourist flows to australia a comparison between the direct and indirect methods this paper compares between the use of direct and indirect forecasting of international tourist flows to australia the indirect method is applicable when time series is a contemporaneous aggregate of others which is often the case for tourist flows time series in this case forecasts are generated by aggregating those of the component variables of aggregation an alternative is the direct method whereby forecasts are generated directly from the aggregated variable this paper uses seasonal arima models regression based models and harvey s structural time series models to compare the accuracy of the two forecasting methods we find evidence strongly in favour of the indirect method using monthly time series for international tourist arrivals to australia

the costs of urban property crime this paper estimates the impact of recorded domestic property crime on property prices in the london area crimes in the criminal damage category have a significant negative impact on prices a one tenth standard deviation decrease in the local density of criminal damage adds 1 to the price of an average inner london property burglaries have no measurable impact on prices even after allowing for the potential dependence of burglary rates on unobserved property characteristics one explanation we offer here is that vandalism graffiti and other forms of criminal damage motivate fear of crime in the community and may be taken as signals or symptoms of community instability and neighbourhood deterioration in general

empirical implications of alternative models of firm dynamics abstract this paper considers two models of firm behavior that allow for heterogeneity among firms idiosyncratic or firm specific sources of uncertainty and discrete outcomes exit and or entry both the characteristics of firm level panel data sets and the nature of the questions we characteristically ask of them imply that models with these features are likely to underlie most detailed empirical work on microdata sets the models we consider are a bayesian learning model due to jovanovic 20 and a model of research and exploration due to ericson and pakes 11 the paper provides a simple set of empirical procedures to help determine which if either of these two models might be appropriate for alternative data sets we conclude by checking for the implications of the two models on an eight year panel of wisconsin firms the results indicate that one model is consistent with the data on manufacturing firms while the other is consistent with the data on retail trade journal of economic literature classification numbers c52 l60 l80

asymmetry and nonstationarity in the farm size distribution of wisconsin milk producers an aggregate analysis a markov model is developed to test the nonstationarity and asymmetry of factors affecting the evolution of wisconsin dairy farms using aggregate data the model is used to examine how prices interest rates debt drought and the dairy termination program affected farm growth and the entry and exit of wisconsin dairy farms by size categories during 1972 92

estimating labor supply and production decisions of self employed farm producers abstract this paper proposes a model oriented towards integrating farm households production and consumption decisions into a unified theoretical and econometric framework it is argued that in contrast with other forms of economic organization farm households utility and profit maximization decisions are not likely to be independent econometric estimation of a farm household model using canadian data suggests that utility and profit maximizing decisions are not indeed independent and moreover that there are significant gains in explanatory power and efficiency by estimating the consumption and production equations jointly

why do farmers fail farm bankruptcies 1910 78 econometric analysis of aggregate time series farm sector data suggests that prior to world war ii the farm bankruptcy rate appears to be associated with financial risk variables while postwar data show a strong association with business risk variables there does not appear to be any evidence that agricultural support payments since world war ii have induced deferred or reduced farm failures

prices technology and farm size in this paper we construct and empirically test a theory of the agricultural firm which explains the long term growth in farm size in the united states typically the u s farm unit is a family enterprise consequently the ratio of the opportunity cost of farm labor to the price of machinery services determines the size of the farm operation by influencing the machine labor ratio applying the model to u s data we explain virtually all of the growth in the machine labor ratio and in farm size over the 1930 70 period by changes in relative factor prices without reference to technological change or economies of scale

internal net worth and the investment process an application to u s agriculture recent models of firm investment decisions stressing informational imperfections in capital markets provide a foundation for interpreting evidence that movements in internal finance can predict investment spending even after one controls for measures of firms investment opportunities while such evidence is suggestive it is often open to other interpretations we examine these models using data on equipment investment in the u s agricultural sector this sector is particularly interesting because it has experienced large fluctuations in net worth and the profitability of investment and reasonable measures of net worth can be constructed our findings provide support for a class of internal funds models of investment under asymmetric information

firm entry and exit in the canadian manufacturing sector 1970 1982 this paper measures the importance of entry and exit to the canadian manufacturing sector in the 1970s it focuses on the size of entrants as they move from a stage of infancy to adolescence the exit rates of births their length of life and the growth path of entrants are presented distinctions are made between greenfield and merger entry while entrants are small at birth the cumulative effect of successive cohorts of entrants in the 1970s adds up to a significant fraction of all firms and total sales by 1979

fundamental q cash flow and investment evidence from farm panel data this study used a 1976 1992 panel data set to test whether farm machinery investors face finance constraints tests were based on fundamental q investment equations in which cash flow was added as an additional explanatory variable results indicated that 1 credit constraints were generally not a problem during the 1970s boom 2 credit constraints became a problem during the 1980s and early 1990s because of tighter credit and or more conservative financial managerial styles 3 the investment cash flow relationships of low debt and older operator farms were not significantly affected by farm business cycles and 4 the investment cash flow relationships of high debt and young operator farms were affected strongly by business cycles debt level was the strongest determinant of credit constraints asset size and operator age were less important

new firm survival new results using a hazard function a limitation of audretsch s 1991 study of new firm survival was the level of aggregation to industries this precluded linking establishment specific characteristics such as organizational structure and size to post entry performance the purpose of this paper is to relate the post entry performance of individual establishments not only to their technological and market structure environments but also to establishment specific characteristics we do this by estimating a hazard duration function for more than 12 000 individual establishments in u s manufacturing started in 1976 by tracking their subsequent performance over a ten year period we conclude that establishment specific characteristics which audretsch was not able to capture in his earlier study play an important role in shaping the exposure to risk confronting new establishments copyright 1995 by mit press

family farm dynamics in canada and israel the case of farm exits abstract canada is one of the few countries for which data exist on individual family farms over time using these data researchers have been able to show that much of the microdynamics of family farms in canada e g changes in size distribution can be attributed to farmer entry and exit however the behavioral aspects of the exit decision received little attention in the literature a comparison of canadian and israeli data could help us understand these behavioral aspects because of the vast institutional differences between the farm sectors in the two countries and the possible effect of the institutional setup on exit decisions comparison of exit patterns may enable us to identify the dependence of farmers mobility on the institutional setup this may also have policy relevance in both canada and israel exit probability decreases with the extent of off farm work we conclude that off farm work is complementary rather than a substitute for farm work perhaps due to its less volatile nature both canadian and israeli farmers over a certain age are more likely to exit as they become older which is a natural result but exit probability in canada rises much faster with age than in israel the major difference between canadian and israeli farm exit patterns lies in the farm size farm size decreases exit probability in canada but increases it in israel perhaps this is because israeli farm exits are less planned in advance than canadian exits institutional constraints on land transactions in israel may also play a role

the implications of the us renewable fuel standard programme for farm structure abstractwe investigate the impact of the 2005 renewable fuel standard rfs on farm structure particularly farm size we rely on the salience of a new ethanol plant in a farmers local neighbourhood to identify the impact of the rfs mandate on these spatially advantaged farms to control for the nonrandom selection of ethanol production facilities we utilize a propensity score matching estimator and to remove impact of farm level or market shifting unobservables resulting from shifts in commodity prices we employ a difference in difference dd matching approach we estimate the treatment effect of an ethanol production facility on farm size prior to the rfs mandate and after the rfs programme the effect of the rfs policy on farm size is obtained as the difference between these two dd matching estimators overall our results suggest that the rfs programme raised the probability of farm size increase by roughly 12 18 on average for farms located within a 30 mile radius of new ethanol plants in add

an econometric analysis of the effects of human capital on size and growth among dairy farms the analysis of size distributions of firms has long been important both inside and outside of agriculture the study of farm size has focused on economies of scale optimal efficient size technical change descriptions of distributions and informal considerations of policy outside of farming the emphasis has been on the relationships between size and growth in both literatures there has been some awareness of the role of the firm operator in firm size and growth in this paper we examine herd size and herd growth for a large sample of southern dairy farms our emphasis is on the relationship of human capital of the operator to the crosssectional size and growth patterns other related work considers size growth issues in more detail sumner and leiby our research relates to several literatures that have evolved along distinct paths these include the analysis of the size distribution of farms see stanton the role of human capital in agriculture and earnings distributions and the analysis of the size distribution of business firms

structural and productivity change in us agriculture 1950 1982 this paper tests whether structural change in us agriculture is an important channel to tfp growth and evaluates the relative impact of i public research and education policies ii private r d and market forces and iii government farm programs on structural change we specify a structural econometric model fit it to us state aggregate data 1953 1982 and use the associated reduced form model to perform counter factual policy simulations the findings include structural change is a channel to tfp growth in both crop and livestock subsector i e specialization size and part time farming do impact tfp holding other variables constant public r d and education have been at least as important as private r d and market forces for changing livestock specialization farm size and farmers off farm work participation over the study period but private r d and market forces have been relatively more important for crop specialization changes in farm commodity programs had little impact on farm structure over these study period overall we conclude that if public r d and education policies had been unchanged at their 1950 values over 1950 1982 major structural changes in us agriculture would have occurred anyway the forces of private r d and market forces were at work including a decline in the price of machinery services and agricultural chemicals relative to the farm wage

government payments and farm business survival using farm level panel data from recent u s agricultural censuses this study examines how direct government payments influence the survival of farm businesses paying particular attention to the differential effect of payments across farm size categories a cox proportional hazards model is used to estimate the effect of government payments on the instantaneous probability of a farm business failure controlling for farm and operator characteristics results indicate that an increase in government payments has a small but statistically significant negative effect on the rate of business failure and the magnitude of this effect increases with farm size

the impact of decoupled payments on farm choices conceptual and methodological challenges abstract in this paper we review the methodological framework for analysing decoupled payments in models of agricultural production market and technological uncertainty farm efficiency credit constraints farm household choices involving extra agricultural decisions policy uncertainty and long run impact of decoupling on investment and land values are the relevant issues that should be pursued by methodological and empirical analysis future research should refine the analysis of decoupled payments mainly trying to provide results that can be useful for policy simulation to bridge the gap between analysis at the individual level and sector policy models

financial structure of farm businesses under imperfect capital markets recent finance studies have considered whether gaps between a firm s costs of internal and external sources of investment funds arising from capital market imperfections influence its investment behavior and funding preferences this study tests the applicability of the pecking order and partial adjustment theories of financial structure to farm businesses by fitting a set of simultaneous financial equations with farm panel data from illinois model results indicate that illinois farms adjust to long run financial targets for equity debt and leasing but that additional financing needs follow a pecking order that is stronger for farms with greater asymmetric information problems copyright 2000 oxford university press