functional ingredients and food choice results from a dual mode study employing means end chain analysis and a choice experiment abstract in this paper we present the results of a choice experiment ce conducted to examine how the inclusion of a functional ingredient to increase the quantity and effectiveness of fibre affects consumer attitudes towards bread an novel feature of the design of our ce was that it was informed by a means end chain mec to reveal key attributes to be included in the ce in addition we included the dutch eating behaviour questionnaire debq to collect information on all participants underlying eating behaviours we find that bread type is a major factor in determining choice and that the inclusion of a functional ingredient yielded relatively small measures of value we also find that there are differences in willingness to pay wtp between respondent segments and that segment membership is explained by the debq information finally we find that respondents have a stronger preference for a simple health statement compared to or in addition to the implied benefits that result from consuming a functional food product these findings are important in informing both pricing and promotional messages for a functional bread product

understanding heterogeneous preferences in random utility models a latent class approach a finite mixture approach toconditional logit models is developed in whichlatent classes are used to promoteunderstanding of systematic heterogeneity the model is applied to wilderness recreationin which a branded choice experiment involvingchoice of one park from a demand system wasadministered to a sample of recreationists the basis of membership in the classes orsegments in the sample involved attitudinalmeasures of motivations for taking a trip aswell as their stated preferences overwilderness park attributes the econometricanalysis suggested that four classes of peopleexist in the sample using the model toexamine welfare measures of some hypotheticalpolicy changes identified markedly differentwelfare effects than the standard singlesegment model and provided insight into thedifferential impact of alternative policies

heterogeneity in preferences for woody biomass energy in the us mountain west abstract millions of acres of public forest in the us mountain west are substantially degraded and are in need of restoration mechanized restoration treatments can improve forest health and reduce the likelihood of severe wildfire these treatments produce some timber and substantial amounts of forest residues that can be used to generate renewable energy and displace fossil fuels using the choice modeling method this study investigates social preferences for generation of energy with woody biomass produced by restoration treatments on public forests in the mountain west both multinomial logit and latent class logit lcl models are fit to the data and used to estimate marginal willingness to pay mwtp for increased amounts of woody biomass energy generation and important associated co benefits and costs positive and statistically significant mwtp is found for the number of homes powered with wood the extent of healthy forests avoiding increases in the number of large wildfires and local air quality significant heterogeneity was found in respondent preferences for the attributes the heterogeneity can be explained in part by sociodemographic and attitudinal characteristics of respondents the lcl revealed four classes of respondents with distinct preferences revealing conflicting viewpoints toward forest management for woody biomass energy generation

supply response and the dispersion of price expectations nomic an0lysis is the implication of aggregation when doing market studies the conditions for exact aggregation under a variety of definitions and settings have been studied paris and rausser theil the focus of this paper is on supply response in agriculture several authors have studied the effects of and tests for differential supply response coefficients across individuals or areas when aggregating firms e g theil p 567 here these coefficients are assumed to be identical for every firm but another problem is examined when uncertainty is present it is well documented that farmers have diverse price expectations e g bessler the question occurs as to the effects of such different expectations on aggregate supply response it is found that the curvature of the supply function is a crucial component of the analysis for example if the supply function is strictly concave an increase in the dispersion of expectations will reduce supply in aggregate

farm policies and added sugars in us diets abstract we examine how us farm policies for sweetener crops have affected the consumption and composition of sweeteners in the us diet r d expenditures have lowered the unit cost of commodities used in sweeteners but have generated more technical progress in corn than in sugar crops increasing use of corn in food production ceteris paribus commodity programs have raised the price of sugar and decreased the price of corn thus high fructose corn syrup hfcs became an inexpensive substitute for sugar in food from 1970 on however the effect of policy on ingredient prices has become less important over time today the farm value share in sweetened food is below 5 and hfcs is a specialized input in many food items with limited substitution possibilities the current link between us sweetener consumption and farm policy is weak recent evidence from other high income countries shows little relationship between sweetener consumption and sugar policies

a repeated nested logit model of atlantic salmon fishing participation and site choice for atlantic salmon fishing are modeled in the context of a repeated three level nested logit model consumer s surplus measures are derived for different levels of species availability in the penobscot river the most important salmon river in new england for comparison six other travel cost models are estimated these include restrictive cases of the nested logit model a partial demand model and two single site demand models comparisons across these models indicate the importance of modeling the participation decision including income effects and of adopting a nested logit structure rather than a single level logit structure

towards a more ethically correct governance for economic sustainability in this paper we propose that economic sustainability is seen in terms of inter temporal and inter national value creation we claim that value appropriation or capture can become a constraint to economic sustainability we propose that for sustainable value creation to be fostered corporate governance needs to be aligned to public and supra national governance in order to achieve this a hierarchically layered set of agencies needs to be diagnosed and the issue of incentive alignment addressed enlightened self interest pluralism and diversity as well as a representative supra national organisation for world wide economic sustainability can serve as a new more ethically correct governance for economic sustainability but not a panacea

a probabilistic choice model for market segmentation and elasticity structure marketing scholars commonly characterize market structure by studying the patterns of substitution implied by brand switching though the approach is useful it typically ignores the destabilizing

the choice theory approach to market research this paper surveys economic choice theory stressing developments that permit use of data from psychometric and conjoint experiments to produce market demand forecasts alternatives to the widely used multinomial logit model are summarized and a new method for estimating multinomial probits is described an integration of choice models with attitudinal scaling and perceptual mapping within a latent variable system is described estimation of such systems under either random effects or fixed effects descriptions of heterogeneity across individuals is discussed issues in the use of choice models to describe responses from conjoint experiments are presented new regression diagnostic tests for the consistency of multinomial logit representations are discussed

washington biofuel feedstock crop supply under output price and quantity uncertainty abstract subsidized development of an in state biofuels industry has received some political support in the state of washington usa utilizing in state feedstock supplies could be an efficient way to stimulate biofuel industries and the local economy in this paper we estimate supply under output price and quantity uncertainty for major biofuel feedstock crops in washington farmers are expected to be risk averse and maximize the utility of profit and uncertainty we estimate very large washington price elasticities for corn and sugar beets but a small price elasticity for a third potential feedstock canola even with the large price elasticities for two potential feedstocks their current and historical production levels in the state are so low that unrealistically large incentives would likely be needed to obtain sufficient feedstock supply for a washington biofuel industry based on our examination of state and regional data we find low likelihood that a washington biofuels industry will develop in the near future primarily using within state biofuel feedstock crops

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

supply and demand functions for multiproduct u s cash grain farms biases caused by research and other policies this study presents new estimates of supply and demand elasticities for u s multiproduct cash grain farms and estimates of input and output bias effects caused by public and private crop research extension and farmers schooling the study also shows that the social rate of return to public crop research is large about 62 percent

evaluating alternative price expectation models for multiproduct supply analysis abstract neoclassical economic theory provides an important conceptual framework for the analysis of agricultural production theory provides little guidance however in the actual specification of empirical models this paper applies an integrated approach for choosing between price expectation mechanisms in a multiple equation model when the alternatives are non nested nine alternative specifications of market price and policy information are developed price forecasting accuracy non nested tests of hypotheses and out of sample predictive accuracy are examined for agricultural production in iowa the results call into question the reliability of using forecasting accuracy as the sole guide to selecting a price expectation proxy

dynamic input demand functions and resource adjustment for us agriculture state evidence abstract the paper presents an econometric model of dynamic agricultural input demand functions that include research based technical change and autoregressive disturbances and fits the model to annual data for a set of state aggregates pooled over 1950 1982 the methodological approach is one of developing a theoretical foundation for a dynamic input demand system and accepting state aggreage behavior as approximated by nonlinear adjustment costs and long term profit maximization although other studies have largely ignored autocorrelation in dynamic input demand systems the results show shorter adjustment lags with autocorrelation than without dynamic input demand own price elasticities for the six input groups are inelastic and the demand functions possess significant cross price and research effects

aggregation without separability tests of the united states and mexican agricultural production data the generalized composite commodity theorem gcct and testing procedure is extended to test for consistent aggregation of the united states and mexican agricultural production data in each category for which earlier tests rejected homothetic separability nonrejected gcct and separability hypotheses provide empirical support for aggregating all the united states agricultural outputs into as few as two categories crops and livestock mexican agricultural outputs also can be aggregated into as few as two categories support for aggregating all outputs into a single category is ambiguous in both countries and is only provided by the gcct

intellectual property rights and the welfare effects of agricultural r d the profound changes that have affected agriculture in modern times are perhaps best illustrated by the evolution of production techniques due to mechanization new chemical inputs such as herbicides pesticides and fertilizers genetic selection of crops and animals new crop varieties and countless other technical and organizational improvements these innovations have allowed a generalized increase in physical output while at the same time agriculture has suffered a massive exodus of labor forces towards the non farm sectors indeed a stylized fact of developed countries post war growth is that productivity in agriculture has grown faster than in other sectors jorgenson and gollop 1992 this remarkable record naturally begs the question of what is at its root and a view that commands considerable consensus is that agricultural productivity growth is due to past investments in scientific research and development r d

measurement of total factor productivity growth and biases in technological change in western australian agriculture this study investigates productivity growth in broad acre agriculture in western australia tornqvist indices of three output groups crops sheep products and other and five input groups livestock materials and services labour capital and land are constructed and discussed indices of total output and total inputs are also derived and used to form an index of total factor productivity that is observed to grow at an average annual rage of 2 7 the input and output indices are also used in the estimation of output supply and input demand equations derived from a flexible profit function the generalized mcfadden functional form is used because it is possible to impose global curvature upon it without loss of flexibility asymptotic chi square tests reject the hypotheses of hicks neutral technical change in inputs and in outputs technical change is observed to be materials and services saving relative to the other input groups and also appears to favour wool and sheepmeat production relative to the other output groups

the corporation competition and the invisible hand few would disagree that adam smith s invisible hand theorem is the heart of the economist s weltanschauung ask whether trade barriers should be lowered the spread of multinational corporations restrained oil prices deregulated cartels dissolved or more fundamentally whether a market based capitalist system is economically superior to a state run socialist system and economists almost certainly will begin to answer the question by trying to apply the theorem every student knows that the theorem depends on the assumption of atomistic competition which in turn assumes that the system is decentralized and that no competitor is large relatively to others there is another crucial assumption however that is often ignored and usually underemphasized namely that all competition is price competition in reality one of the most distinctive features of capitalism one that is most often raised in lay discussions of its merits and demerits is the prevalence of other forms of competition such as competition in research development and advertising competition to obtain and hold monopoly and competition for corporate growth these various forms of non price competition we shall aim to show are not clearly analogous with the theory of price competition more non price competition rather than less is not necessarily pareto optimal self evidently the production side of a market economy is decentralized only to a limited degree i e to the level of a decision making unit composed of more than one human such a unit playing neuron to the invisible hand is typically called a firm it is in fact a team rather than remaining small firms are in practice composed of any number of individuals from a handful on to half a million some

the separation of ownership and control in the theory of the firm a reappraisal abstract managerialists argue that today s large corporations are either owner or manager controlled this classification is based upon an ex post analysis of shareholdings if no cohesive group of shareholders possesses more than a fixed percentage of shares the conclusion is that owners do not have control which is assumed to pass to managers this paper counters this approach arguing 1 causality runs from control to observed shareholdings and 2 the observed holdings generally suffice to give a subset of owners control in so doing the paper also confronts and rejects the neoclassical approach

industrial organisation the degree of monopoly and macroeconomic performance a perspective on the contribution of keith cowling 1936 2016 keith cowling became a pioneer and key figure in a number of areas in industrial economics including mergers and acquisitions advertising the theoretical determination of structure conduct performance scp relationships and the welfare losses of monopoly power he was informed and motivated by real life challenges of real life people and aimed to find solutions that fostered social welfare by leveraging the power of theory and evidence in mainstream io he was mostly famed for his work on scp and monopoly power building upon this contribution keith also became renowned for being critical of contemporary capitalism arguing that its concentration tendencies rendered it prone to abuse of corporate power and paved the way to stagnation and crises in doing so he provided an insight into how the micro firm and industry level foundations of the industrial economy impacted upon macro economic performance he cross fertilised mainstream and radical approaches to economics and was widely respected for his conceptual mathematical and empirical rigour in this paper we highlight his major contributions in the fields of io international political economy and public policy

how reliable is duality theory in empirical work the neoclassical theory of production establishes a dual relationship between the profit value function of a competitive firm and its underlying production technology this relationship commonly referred to as duality theory has been widely used in empirical work to estimate production parameters such as elasticities and returns to scale we generate a pseudo dataset by monte carlo simulations which starting from known production parameters yield a dataset with the main characteristics of u s agriculture in terms of unobserved firm heterogeneity decisions under uncertainty unexpected production and price shocks endogenous prices output and input aggregation measurement error in variables and omitted variables production parameters are not precisely recovered when performing econometric estimation based on the duality approach and the elasticity estimates are inaccurate deviations of own and cross price elasticities from initial median values given our parameter calibration range between 6 and 690 with an average of 90 also own price elasticities are as imprecisely recovered as cross price elasticities sensitivity analysis shows that results still hold for different sources and levels of noise and sample size used in estimation

dynamic factor demand equations in u s and canadian agriculture abstract this research provides one of the first empirical estimates of a data based dynamic factor demand model for american and canadian agriculture models such as these deserve more widespread use in the empirical analysis of agriculture these models have the advantage that they do not impose inappropriate dynamics on the data rather they permit the data to select the appropriate dynamics we use a model originally developed by anderson and blundell this model is a general first order dynamic model which contains as testable hypothesis several simpler models this model permits us to estimate the long run agricultural production structure as a subset of the dynamic parameter estimates we will test this long run structure for symmetry homotheticity and neutral technical change the estimated models may be used to test for three alternative dynamic structures in the limit dynamics may not be needed and we can test for the static long run equilibrium model two intermediate cases are the autoregressive and the partial adjustment models which are simpler than the general model but still include dynamics our results suggest that the long run equilibrium model is unsatisfactory in both countries a dynamic model is needed in both countries the two more restricted dynamic models are rejected the general dynamic model is required in canada the long run equilibrium structure is homothetic with neutral technical change in the united states homotheticity is also accepted but neutral technical change is rejected

dynamic fertilizer nutrient demands for corn a cointegrated and error correcting system past studies of the demand for fertilizer have typically been based on static models which assume that adjustments toward equilibrium are instantaneous this article builds on past studies by developing a dynamic model of nutrient demands of corn unit root and cointegration tests demonstrate that fertilizer demands of corn are dynamic therefore statistically correct estimates can be obtained using a dynamic model a set of error correction models for nitrogen phosphate and potash use in corn production are estimated results provide strong statistical evidence that nutrient demands of corn are price inelastic both in the short and the long run

designing a payments for ecosystem services pes program to reduce deforestation in tanzania an assessment of payment approaches abstract payments for ecosystem services pes programs aim to improve environmental outcomes by providing direct incentives to land managers for the provision of ecosystem services participation in pes programs is voluntary so effective program design requires careful consideration of farmers preferences this study quantifies such preferences using a choice experiment the study site is the east usambara mountains tanzania an internationally recognized biodiversity hotspot we assess preferences for four payment approaches constant and variable annual cash payments to individual farmers a constant annual cash payment to a village fund on behalf of farmers and an upfront manure fertilizer payment we find that the manure fertilizer payment was statistically significant in motivating farmer participation while the group payment was non significant in addition the relationship between the likelihood of participation and the stringency of conditionality is surprisingly non linear in a test of external validity average willingness to accept wta values are found to be similar to the average opportunity cost of maintaining land uses consistent with conservation objectives

research and extension expenditures and productivity in japanese agriculture 1960 1990 abstract this paper investigates the cause for the decline in the growth of productivity in japanese agriculture since the late 1960s for this objective it investigates the effects of research and extension r e activities on the extent and the direction of the bias of technological change in japanese agriculture for the period 1960 1990 based on the translog cost function framework empirical results show that the cost reducing effects of r e measured in terms of the absolute value of the cost r e elasticity increased slightly from 0 194 in 1960 to 0 205 in 1965 and then decreased consistently to 0 110 in 1990 this finding is broadly consistent with the finding of the decline or slowdown in agricultural productivity since the late 1960s the bias due to r e was found to be toward labor intermediate inputs and other inputs saving on the one hand and machinery and land using on the other labor saving and machinery using biases are consistent with the hicksian induced innovation hypothesis

reflections on agricultural r d productivity and the data constraint unfinished business unsettled issues sixty years ago t w schultz introduced the idea of the productivity residual to agricultural economics 1956 schultz s main message was that growth in conventional inputs accounted for little of the observed growth in agricultural output and that there was work to be done by agricultural economists to understand and ultimately eliminate this unexplained residual called productivity thus was launched the economics of agricultural productivity as a sub field within agricultural economics along with the economics of agricultural r d and innovation and related government policy much progress has been made in the decades since still critical issues remain unresolved this matters because agricultural innovation and productivity matter and so do the related policies that rest to some extent on our established understanding of the economic relationships in this paper i review some unsettled issues related to economic models and measures applied to agricultural r d and productivity and some unfinished business in terms of economic and policy questions that are not yet well answered before doing that i present some evidence on agricultural productivity and why it matters next with a nod to factology i present available productivity measures from the u s department of agriculture usda and international science and technology practice and policy instepp center and compare them in the context of translog cost function models in subsequent sections i use these and other data to develop new evidence related to two contentious questions a do farmers benefit from public agricultural r d b has u s agricultural productivity growth slowed in recent decades the answers are revealed within

supply demand and technology in a multiproduct industry texas field crops the purpose of this paper is to examine the structure of agricultural production for six texas field crops cotton grain sorghum wheat corn rice and hay which account for nearly 95 of recent field crop value specific objectives are to a test the structure of technology to determine i if output and input utilization choices for individual products are independent of production decisions about other outputs and ii if products and or inputs can be consistently aggregated b estimate a coherent set of interrelated supply functions for the six commodities and input demand functions for fertilizer and hired labor because the empirical focus of this paper is specific to one state the results will be of limited value for interpreting specific production relationships elsewhere however the problem is of common interest in production agriculture and the techniques used demonstrate an important application of dual modeling

productivity growth and the effects of r d in african agriculture this article measures and compares total factor productivity growth in african agriculture under contemporaneous and sequential technology frontiers over the period 1970 2004 the sources of productivity growth are examined using a fixed effects regression model and a polynomial distributed lag structure for agricultural r d expenditures while conventional estimates show an average productivity growth rate of only 0 3 per year the improved measures under sequential technology show that african agricultural productivity grew at a higher rate of 1 8 per year technical progress rather than efficiency change was the principal source of productivity growth agricultural r d weather and trade reforms turned out to have significant effects on productivity in african agriculture with a rate of return of 33 per year r d is shown to be a socially profitable investment in african agriculture while a strong r d expenditure growth of about 2 per year in the 1970s led to strong productivity growth after the mid 1980s stagnation of r d expenditure in the 1980s and early 1990s led to slower productivity growth in the 2000s consistent with recent economic recovery in africa evidenced by stronger agricultural gdp growth rates results showed that policy reforms as well as improved weather contributed to the recovery of agricultural productivity after the mid 1980s

combining attitudinal statements with choice experiments to analyze preference heterogeneity for functional dairy products abstract in this article we employ a discrete choice experiment to examine preferences for functional dairy product attributes and willingness to pay estimates for consumers in germany we estimate preference heterogeneity by linking stated preference choice data not only to socioeconomic characteristics but also to attitudinal statements in a latent class framework the empirical results indicate the existence of class specific preference heterogeneity based on the consumers attitude towards functional foods emphasizing the importance of attitudinal data in explaining consumers choice behavior our estimates demonstrate that within a class consumers preferences are in accordance with their responses to attitudinal statements that is functional food skeptics prefer non functional dairy products while functional food advocates have a negative preference for non functional dairy products the findings also show that all consumers place high value on dairy products enriched with known functional ingredients such as omega 3 fatty acids

output supply and input demand system of commercial and backyard poultry producers in indonesia indonesia s domestic broiler production has grown rapidly in part because of a ban on imports of poultry parts and strict inspection and meat certification requirements whether indonesia will continue to protect the domestic broiler sector and import feed grains and other inputs or whether it will directly import meat products is a relevant question to many stakeholders this study uses a normalized quadratic function to estimate the output supply of commercial and backyard broiler producers in indonesia and the input demand for three major inputs day old chicks feed and labor data come from three datasets a 1996 household survey and 1996 and 2000 surveys of commercial producers for the most recent dataset the own price elasticity in both the output supply and feed input demand equations were found to be significant the signs of the elasticities were theoretically consistent with a positive supply and negative demand elasticity the magnitudes of the elasticities were smaller than expected the supply elasticity was 0 285 the inelastic supply explains the high border protection imposed by indonesia which in turn implies that any income driven expansion in the quantity of broiler product demanded would be quickly constrained by rising prices consequently supply from imports would become attractive and would dampen any incentive for growth in the domestic sector this result cast doubt on the long term sustainability of indonesia s import substitution policy regime

modeling the length and shape of the r d lag an application to uk agricultural productivity this article updates total factor productivity tfp growth in uk agriculture from 1953 2005 and shows that public and private research and returns to scale explain tfp cointegration and causality tests are used to investigate the validity of attempts to explain uk agricultural productivity with r d and related technology variables then the length and shape of the lag structures are modeled and compared with the structures that are commonly imposed on the data the rates of return ror to r d using the data determined lags differ considerably from those obtained by imposing lag shapes these comparisons show that the ror to public r d are sensitive to the lag shape as well as its length and that the omission of other technology variables such as mechanical and chemical patents pertaining to agriculture and farm size can bias the ror

perceptions versus objective measures of environmental quality in combined revealed and stated preference models of environmental valuation abstract this study examines perceptions and objective attribute measures in discrete choice models of recreation site choice behavior these forms of attribute measurement are examined in individual and combined revealed preference stated preference models our results suggest that the model based on perceptions slightly outperforms the models based on objective attribute measures however issues such as the definition of the choice set and the measurement of welfare present significant challenges when using perceptions data

reconsidering heterogeneity and aggregation issues in environmental valuation a multi attribute approach the economic valuation of complex environmental goods composed of multiple attributes is an expanding field of research in ecological and environmental economics however several issues are still subjects of debate this paper focuses on three of them the linearity of the valuation function in the attributes aggregation criteria for obtaining social values and the heterogeneity of individuals utility functions a methodological approach based on multi attribute utility theory which enables us to contrast the impact of these concerns on the valuation of environmental goods is proposed we employ the methodology to value a protected natural area and from the results obtained we can conclude that the non linearity and the heterogeneity of the individual utility function are relevant aspects of environmental valuation that need to be taken into account when valuing environmental goods

research and productivity in mexican agriculture partial and total factor productivity tfp measures of mexican agriculture are calculated for 1960 90 the long run effects of research and international transfer of technology on tfp are examined over the 1940 90 period using cointegration procedures tfp increased at an average annual rate of 2 5 exceeding the corresponding growth in the united states 2 1 tfp grew particularly fast in the 1960s and 1970s a 1 rise in research investment increased tfp by 0 13 and a 1 increase in u s tfp translated into a 1 11 increase in mexican tfp the average annual rate of return to research investment is about 64

do protest responses to a contingent valuation question and a choice experiment differ it is suggested that the number of protest responses in stated preference surveys depends inter alia on the valuation method used choice experiments ce are said to generate a lower number of protest responses than contingent valuation cv however no comparison of both methods with respect to protest responses has been conducted to date we used both ce and cv in a survey on forest biodiversity in two german regions protest beliefs were measured for all respondents irrespective of whether they were willing to pay or not the results show no clear pattern of differences between ce and cv regarding protest beliefs and protest responses using an attitude scale based on respondents protest beliefs we see a significant negative effect of this attitude on willingness to pay in both methods however in one of the two study regions the effect is weaker in ce than in cv

the governance of networks and economic power the nature and impact of subcontracting relationships current debate on networking focuses on network structures and firm strategies in this perspective theoretical analysis has been concerned with allocative issues this essay proposes a different interpretation starting from the existing theoretical framework we emphasise the nature and the implications of different types of networks with respect to socio economic development from a distributional point of view within this context we develop the analysis of subcontracting starting from the concept of economic power we then provide an analysis of governance in production by considering the attitudes and the nature of the actors involved the externalisation of activities by large transnationals which characterises current corporate restructuring is often related to the search for greater flexibility but also for greater power over governments labour and subcontractors differently networks based on the mutual dependence of actors which are not necessarily built around a large firm could under particular conditions reach large production scales or more complex scopes without breaking the links with territorial systems thus including local objectives in the strategic decision making process our conclusion is that the impact of subcontracting networks varies enormously this is crucial to an understanding of future trends and possibilities not least firms and public policy agencies need to understand the implications of different forms of subcontracting network and how those forms actually differ in practice

output response to prices and public investment in agriculture indonesian food crops abstract this paper analyzes dynamic food crop supply response in indonesia the effects of technology prices and investments on output growth for rice corn soybean and cassava are examined the analysis generates crop wise area yield and input demand parameters suitable for the evaluation of price and investment policies and shows the large impact of public investment in agricultural research extension and irrigation on long run output growth in indonesia elimination of the fertilizer subsidy and reinvestment of the resulting fiscal savings in research extension and irrigation would produce large benefits

multiple input multiple output production choices and technology in the u s wheat region duality theory motivates a translog expected profit function consistent with multiple products price uncertainty preseason climate constraints acreage control policies and possibly nonhomothetic technology although multiple outputs are allowed enterprise specific data is not necessary instead time series measures of output revenues and expected prices input expenses and prices and fixed input flows are employed appropriate measures of elasticities of choice returns to size and biases in technological change are derived results indicated decreasing returns to size rather limited though complementary responsiveness of choices to price changes and the nature of biases in technological changes

modelling technical change in italian agriculture a latent variable approach this paper presents an alternative approach to the measurement of technical change it is based on the latent variable level of technology that enters explicitly the input demand system and on a hypothesis about the innovation generating process by adding measurement error equations the behavioral system can be viewed as a multiple indicators multiple causes mimic model the parameter estimates are obtained with a maximum likelihood estimator which involves the implicit covariance matrix the analysis refers to italian agriculture and the results provide some evidence on the nature and level of technical change during the years 1961 1991

short and long run adjustments in dairy production a profit function analysis a dual profit model is developed to analyse the structure of dairy technology using farm level data for vermont potential short and long run effects of milk price reductions on output supply input demand farm size and profitability are studied the observed levels of the quasi fixed inputs family labour and herd size are found to be significantly lower than their optimal or long run equilibrium values which is consistent with a continuing shift towards fewer and larger dairy farms the analysis suggests that lower milk prices threaten the short run survival of small and medium size farms and reduce the optimal farm size in the long run

effects on welfare measures of alternative means of accounting for preference heterogeneity in recreational demand models multiattribute revealed preference data are used to investigate heterogeneity in a sample of kayakers for a panel of whitewater sites in ireland this article focuses on a comparison of preference heterogeneity using a random parameter logit model with correlated tastes and a latent class model in terms of the implications for welfare measures of environmental quality and site access changes recreationalists skill levels are found to affect preferences in both approaches statistics for the estimated distribution of welfare changes for the average respondent are computed for changes in site attributes but contrary to previous work these are found to be of similar magnitude

random coefficient models for stated preference surveys abstract this paper combines the use of random coefficient discrete choice models that allow for correlated errors in the form of unobserved preference heterogeneity with an investigation of the reliability and usefulness of rankings data for the data we examine we find significant unobserved preference heterogeneity in the rankings which violates the underlying assumptions of the rank ordered logit model further directly modeling unobserved preference heterogeneity results in significant improvement in the precision of the parameter estimates and in estimated willingness to pay wtp the reliability and usefulness of rankings data should be re examined with econometric models not subject to the independence of irrelevant alternatives iia

input demands and inefficiency in u s agriculture markov chain monte carlo mcmc methods are used to estimate a seemingly unrelated regression sur system of input demand functions for u s agriculture our demand functions have flexible forms and allow for nonrandom technical inefficiency concavity constraints are imposed at individual data points and the distributions of measures of relative technical efficiency are constrained to the unit interval results are evaluated in terms of characteristics of the posterior distributions of parameters measures of relative technical efficiency and other nonlinear functions of the parameters

recreation demand models with taste differences over people we estimate random parameter logit models of anglers choice of fishing site the models generalize logit by allowing coefficients to vary randomly over anglers rather than being fixed the models do not exhibit the restrictive independence from irrelevant alternatives property of logit and can represent any substitution pattern estimation explicitly accounts for the fact that the variation in coefficients over anglers induces correlation in unobserved utility over trips by the same angler willingness to pay for improved fish stock and the value to anglers of specific sites are calculated from the models and compared with the estimates obtained from a standard logit model

heterogeneous preferences regarding global climate change we examine the structure of preferences for mitigating impacts of global climate change that will not occur during the lifetimes of most who are alive today because no market data exist for such distant markets a statedpreference approach is used the analysis is based on the random parameters logit model and the results indicate substantial heterogeneity in respondent preferences that mean willingness to pay is a significant and increasing function of the scope of the impact and provocatively that respondents have the same preferences over the two very different time horizons that we consider e examine the structure of preferences for mitigating impacts of global climate change that will not occur during the lifetimes of most who are alive today studies using current market data have estimated the potential costs of climate change on agriculture mendelsohn nordhaus shaw 1994 and on other aspects of measured production nordhaus 1994 but market data can not reveal the willingness of those currently alive to pay for measures to mitigate impacts that may not happen for 100 years or more there is serious public discussion involving diplomats at the highest levels about measures to mitigate emissions that would cost the united states alone 100 to 200 billion dollars annually therefore estimating the willingness of those currently alive to pay for mitigation measures is not a fanciful exercise but rather a crucial effort to determine how much mitigation should be undertaken it is the preferences of those alive today regarding acceptable levels of climate impacts and not the unknowable preferences of those who do not yet exist that will ultimately determine how much mitigation we pursue in the next quarter century as this question cannot be answered with market data we use the stated preference sp approach and elicit preferences for preventing climate change induced impacts a host of climate change impacts have been enumerated this study focuses on one type of impact that may be important but has received little attention from economists scientists have predicted that widespread ecosystem shifts may accompany changes in climate vemap 1995 ecosys tem shifts are likely to evolve slowly indicating that lost use values are likely to be small for those alive today yet the public may still be willing and asked to pay for mitigation measures that are designed to slow the transformation of ecosystems the current debate over climate change demon strates two things the first is that some people do care about long term changes that will never affect them or perhaps even their children the second is that preferences regarding the impacts of climate change are very heterogeneous as other members of the public appear much less concerned long term horizons combined with heterogeneous prefer ences makes ecosystem shifts a useful place to begin analyzing preferences for mitigating climate change im pacts a stated preference survey was designed that asked respondents to choose their most preferred program to reduce ecological impacts from a set menu of five or six different programs the programs varied in terms of costs the degree of ecosystem change and in the mitigation method four different menus provided to each respondent yielded four distinct valuation responses section ii de scribes the random parameters logit model for repeated choices that allows for a flexible correlation structure based on heterogeneous preferences the ecosystem change and the stated preference survey are discussed in section iii in section iv we estimate the random parameters model and estimate the willingness to pay to prevent various levels of ecosystem change section v concludes with a discussion of how the scope of the impact preference heterogeneity and the time horizon affect willingness to pay

convergence in u s productivity growth for agriculture implications of interstate research spillovers for funding agricultural research state crop livestock and aggregate agricultural total factor productivity tfp data 1950 82 are examined for evidence of convergence to a single tfp level convergence or to a steady state rate of growth or conditional convergence our empirical results do not support convergence but do support convergence the rate of convergence is variable and depends on research and development r d spillins from other states private r d and farmers schooling the finding of strong positive interstate spillover effects implies that independent state planning of agricultural research is inefficient and cooperation across states boundaries including establishment of new political jurisdictions for financing public agricultural research can enhance efficiency

induced innovation in u s agriculture time series direct econometric and nonparametric tests the hypothesis of induced innovation is tested for u s agriculture using a high quality state level panel data set and three disparate testing techniques time series direct econometric and nonparametric we find little support for the hypothesis that conclusion is robust across testing techniques however as with all empirical tests of this hypothesis conducted to date ours focus only on the demand side of the hypothesis the hypothesis could have been rejected simply because the marginal cost of developing and implementing input saving technologies for the relatively expensive inputs is greater than for the relatively cheap inputs copyright 2009 oxford university press

respondent experience and contingent valuation of environmental goods abstract respondent experience i e a respondent s information set has long been suspected to influence contingent valuation estimates of environmental values we assess the influence of experience by explicitly modeling the relationship between respondent experience and both fitted individual resource values and the conditional variance of these estimated values using three different joint specifications for experience and wtp normal censored normal poisson censored normal and zero inflated poisson censored normal we find discrete jumps in resource values as experience increases from zero and that more experienced respondents have smaller conditional variances simulation of arbitrary levels of experience allows standardization of the amount of information when developing welfare estimates