the effects of inflation surprises and uncertainty on real wages this paper presents a partial equilibrium model of the labor market that allows the real wage the expected real wage and the level of employment to be expressed as functions of unexpected inflation inflation uncertainty and supply shocks regression equation estimation using u s data from 1948 to 1980 suggests that inflationary surprises and uncertainty cause countercycical movement in real wages various supply shock variables are introduced the findings suggest the importance of oil shocks as compared with measures based on food or imports but only after 1973

the demographic transition and the emergence of sustained economic growth the demographic transition that swept the world in the course of the last century has been identified as one of the prime forces in the transition from stagnation to growth the unprecedented increase in population growth during the early stages of industrialization was ultimately reversed and the demographic transition brought about a significant reduction in fertility rates and population growth in various regions of the world enabling economies to convert a larger share of the fruits of factor accumulation and technological progress into growth of income per capita this paper examines various mechanisms that have been proposed as possible triggers for the demographic transition assessing their empirical validity and their potential role in the transition from stagnation to growth jel o11 o14 o33 o40 j11 j13

technological vs ecological switch and the environmental kuznets curve we consider an optimal technology adoption ak model in line with boucekkine krawczyk and vallee 2011 an economy caring about consumption and pollution as well starts with a given technological regime and may decide to switch at any moment to a cleaner technology at a given permanent or transitory output cost at the same time we posit that there exists a pollution threshold above which the assimilation capacity of nature goes down featuring a kind of irreversible ecological regime we study how ecological irreversibility interacts with the ingredients of the latter optimal technological switch problem with a special attention to induced capital pollution relationship we find that if a single technological switch is optimal one recovers the environmental kuznets curve provided initial pollution is high enough if exceeding the ecological threshold is optimal then the latter configuration is far from being the rule

technical quality and environmental efficiency of the olive oil industry abstract this paper studies the level of technical efficiency in the olive oil industry from a multi output perspective and examines olive oil production in quantitative and qualitative terms the study also covers the environmental impact of the production process these are key issues due to the current environmental organoleptic and food traceability requirements of the eu common agricultural policy cap furthermore product differentiation is sought after in today s ever more demanding markets the production of olive oil in andalusia spain is the most important agricultural food industry in the whole region and it represents 30 of world olive oil production three data sources have been used a comprehensive survey to a sample of olive oil producers their financial reports and the opinion of a group of experts in olive oil production techniques interviewed by means of the delphi survey with this data and after the construction of indicators a production frontier is elaborated by applying an extension of the data envelopment analysis dea technique this will allow for the measuring of the relative technical efficiency indices and set specific efficiency indices for both the quality of the oil produced and the environmental impact of the production process those factors impacting on efficiency are determined by a truncated regression model with bootstrap the results show a medium high level of relative technical efficiency and highlight the importance of efficiency factors involving production and marketing associations

the economic impact of agricultural extension a review the history of economic development shows that few countries have achieved sustained economic growth without first or simultaneously developing their agricultural sector in most developing countries agriculture is the most important economic activity providing income employment and foreign exchange without an efficient agricultural sector a country is severely constrained in its ability to feed itself or import foreign products for domestic consumption and development rapid technological advances in agriculture have occurred since world war ii these advances have induced great changes in agricultural production and also highlighted the importance of a rapid and efficient transfer of advanced knowledge to the farmer when farmers become aware of the availability of new technology they may have inaccurate perceptions of the related costs and benefits as information availability may be limited as farmers decisions are based on their perceptions their resource allocation and technology choice will deviate from the social optimum if perceptions do not coincide with the correct attributes of the technology both society and the farmers as individuals would gain from improved information and theoretically there should exist a market for information however information on improved agricultural technology is often a public good because the provider of the information cannot exclude other potential users from free access to information provided to one user and the value of the information is not directly affected by the number of users while many instances of market activities in various aspects of agricultural information are observed e g specialized information on pest man

measuring technical and environmental efficiency in a state contingent technology most developed countries support farming activities through policies that are tailored to meet their specific social economic and environmental objectives economic and environmental efficiency have recently become relevant targets of most of these policies whose sound implementation can be enhanced by monitoring farm performance from a multidimensional perspective this paper proposes farm level technical and environmental efficiency measures that recognize the stochastic conditions in which production takes place a state contingent framework is used to model production uncertainty an implementable representation of the technology is developed using data envelopment analysis the application focuses on a sample of catalan arable crop farms results suggest that technical efficiency is slightly lower in bad than in good growing conditions nitrogen pollution can decrease substantially more under good than bad growing conditions

new approach for the assignment of new european agricultural subsidies using scores from data envelopment analysis application to olive growing farms in andalusia spain abstract more than 60 of olive growing farms in andalusia spain would have negative returns without european agricultural subsidies agenda 2000 criteria imply that agricultural subsidies currently play the role of enhancing the production quality and the environmental and social values of agriculture although the necessity of the modulation of subsidies is stated the eu regulations do not state which objective criteria should be used or how they should be measured despite the fact that regulations demand objectivity in this measurement this paper proposes an allocation system for subsidies which takes the agenda 2000 criteria into account through their assignment according to farm efficiency which is calculated by decomposing overall dea scores by means of internalizing the positive and negative externalities of agricultural activity the paper analyzes the type efficiency of the andalusian olive growing sector by using the proposed indexes over a sample of 3000 real farms taken from the administrative subsidy database

necessary conditions for infinite horizon discounted two stage optimal control problems abstract in many situations in economics one would like to analyse the optimal timing of switching between alternative and consecutive regimes a natural framework for such an analysis seems to be one of multi stage optimal control problems where the switching instants between regimes are endogenously determined the existing literature considers only the case of two stage optimal control problems with finite horizon however in many cases it seems more appropriate to consider a problem with an infinite horizon by deriving the appropriate necessary conditions for such a problem we generalise the methodology in analysing endogenous regime switches

technology adoption learning by doing and economic growth abstract we develop a model in which firms choose which technologies to adopt as well as the timing of such adoptions in between adoptions a firm accumulates expertise in its technology which allows it to operate the technology more efficiently thus there is firm specific learning by doing for certain parameterizations of the model and appropriate initial distributions of technologies and expertise equilibria are characterized by positive and constant growth of per capita output and positive but nonconstant growth of each firm s output we find firms adoption decisions and output growth depend upon the efficiency of capital markets journal of economic literature classification numbers o41 o33

price protection and productivity growth this study provides empirical evidence on the relationship between price protection and productivity growth from theoretical considerations it is concluded that the impact of price protection on productivity growth is ambiguous although protectionism may in some instances stimulate investment and adoption of new technologies efficiency may decrease particularly when farm prices and income are high empirical evidence from the new zealand beef sheep industry indicates that high protection during the 1975 85 period produced negative productivity growth following market liberalization in 1985 productivity growth increased substantially

efficiency in agricultural production the case of peasant farmers in eastern paraguay abstract this paper contributes to the productivity literature in developing country agriculture by quantifying the level of efficiency for a sample of peasant farmers from eastern paraguay a stochastic efficiency decomposition methodology is used to derive technical allocative and economic efficiency measures separately for cotton and cassava an average economic efficiency of 40 1 for cotton and of 52 for cassava is found which suggests considerable room for productivity gains for the farms in the sample through better use of available resources given the state of technology gains in output through productivity growth have become increasingly important to paraguay as the opportunities to bring additional virgin lands into cultivation have significantly diminished in recent years no clear strategy to improve farm productivity could be gleaned from an examination of the relationship between efficiency and various socioeconomic variables one possible explanation for this finding is the existence of a stage of development threshold below which there is no consistent relationship between socioeconomic variables and productivity if this is the case then our results suggest that this sample of paraguayan peasants are yet to reach such a threshold hence improvements in educational and extension services for example would be needed to go beyond this threshold once this is accomplished additional productivity gains would be obtained by further investments in human capital and related factors

optimal transition to renewable energy with threshold of irreversible pollution when cheap fossil energy is polluting and pollutant no longer absorbed beyond a certain concentration there is a moment when the introduction of a cleaner renewable energy although onerous is optimal with respect to inter temporal utility the cleaner technology is adopted either instantaneously or gradually at a controlled rate the problem of optimum under viability constraints is 6 dimensional under a continuous discrete dynamic controlled by energy consumption and investment into production of renewable energy viable optima are obtained either with gradual or with instantaneous adoption a longer time horizon increases the probability of adoption of renewable energy and the time for starting this adoption it also increases maximal utility and the probability to cross the threshold of irreversible pollution exploiting a renewable energy starts sooner when adoption is gradual rather than instantaneous the shorter the period remaining after adoption until the time horizon the higher the investment into renewable energy

evaluating the impact of individual fishing quotas ifqs on the technical efficiency and composition of the us gulf of mexico red snapper commercial fishing fleet this study examines the impact of individual fishing quotas ifqs on the technical efficiency te and composition of the gulf of mexico red snapper commercial fishing fleet employing a parametric stochastic distance frontier framework we find that ifqs improved the te of the vertical line and bottom longline fleets our results suggest that the observed te gains were mainly driven by the retirement of less efficient vessels and to a lesser extent by efficiency gains of the remaining vessels we also document changes in output and input distance elasticities and in returns to scale following the introduction of ifqs the paper also investigates the impact of regulations and weather on productivity and the effect of crowding on te policy implications stemming from these results are also discussed

the spanish beef sector in the 1990s impact of the bse crisis on efficiency and profitability the beef sector has undergone a series of changes as a result of successive food scares and agricultural policy reforms the purpose of the paper is to analyse technical efficiency and profitability in spanish livestock enterprises during the 1990s focusing on the possible impact of the bse crisis and the 1992 cap reform on each of these variables the main findings reveal the existence of technical inefficiency during the sample period some factors have a positive impact others a negative impact on efficiency as far as the effects of cap reform and the bse crisis are concerned the results show the ineffectiveness of agricultural policy regulation to promote efficiency in the sector and the improvement in the efficiency as a consequence of the bse crisis the profitability analysis reveals the importance of direct subsidies however in their absence a large percentage of holdings is unable to remunerate either own or rented factors analysis shows therefore that there are two counteracting effec

uncertain effects of money and the link between the inflation rate and inflation uncertainty in the postwar period high rates of inflation are associated with high levels of inflation uncertainty in this paper i argue that the inflation rate and inflation uncertainty are linked by forecasters uncertainty about the impact of money growth on the price level and i present evidence indicating that this has been the case as long as the impact of money growth on the price level remains unpredictable then even predictable money growth will cause inflation uncertainty with its accompanying adverse effects on employment and output

organic farming in scandinavia productivity and market exit abstract this paper attempts to quantitatively measure the change in the productivity of danish organic farming in recent years based on a translog production frontier framework the technical and scale efficiency at farm level is analysed by following a time trends as well as a general index model specification further this study tries to analyse the significance of subsidies for promoting long term growth in organic production by estimating a bootstrapped bivariate probit model with respect to factors influencing the probability of organic market exit the results revealed significant differences in the organic farms technical efficiencies no significant total factor productivity growth and even a slightly negative rate of technical change in the period investigated evidence has been found for a positive relationship between subsidy payments and an increase in farm efficiency technology improvements and a decreasing probability of organic market exit which was also confirmed for off farm income

systematic departures from the frontier a framework for the analysis of firm inefficiency departures from a production or cost frontier may reflect the systematic effect of conditions that contribute to inefficiency to test whether some portion of frontier function departures can be systematically explained the frontier inefficiency error component is modeled as a function of various causal factors and a random component the functional form of the inefficiency error term model is chosen to assure strict one sidedness preliminary empirical results generated from electric utility data suggest the superiority of including both systematic and random components in the inefficiency error term

the changing responsiveness of wages to price level shocks explicit and implicit indexation the article provides evidence for the u s over the period 1961 84 that the responsiveness of nonunion wages to price level shocks changes through time much as the degree of indexation in union contracts does suggesting that there exists implicit as well as explicit indexation when coupled with the result from previous research that indexation responds positively to inflation uncertainty the findings indicate that greater inflation uncertainty may lead to reduced overall wage rigidity in the context of a rational expectations model with long term wage contracts a decline in the effectiveness of an activist monetary policy could result

organic or conventional optimal dairy farming technology under the eu milk quota system and organic subsidies this paper assesses the competitiveness of organic and conventional dairy farms under different milk market and organic farming policy scenarios we use a dea based model to estimate for each policy scenario the sample farms profit potential in both technologies the model enables identification of a farm s optimal technology based on its input output observations the empirical analysis is based on the annual accounts of 1300 bavarian dairy farms results indicate that approximately 69 78 of the organic conventional farms have chosen their optimal farming system the remaining organic conventional farmers could increase their profit on average by roughly 6 10 by switching to the other technology abolishment of the eu milk quota results in a considerable decline in the number of sample farms for which organic farming is the optimal technology suggesting that ceteris paribus organic dairy farms may lose competitive advantage with the deregulation of the eu s milk market regime in 2015 organic maintenance payments more than double the number of farms with a higher earning potential in organic farming but their effectiveness could decline when the milk quota is abolished c 2010 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

a two stage dea approach for quantifying and analysing the inefficiency of conventional and organic rain fed cereals in spain abstract this paper assesses the efficiency of rain fed cereals crops grown in southern spain the proposed approach uses a two stage data envelopment analysis dea plus regression approach in the first stage a slacks based inefficiency sbi dea model is used to project conventional and organic cropping systems onto the efficient frontier the results of the efficiency analysis show that conventional production is more inefficient than organic production and that the main sources of inefficiency in the case of conventional production correspond to excessive input consumption and ghg emissions in the case of organic production the inefficiency comes from output shortfalls it is shown that reducing inefficiency would reduce the amount of ghg emitted per unit of fresh matter yielded this potential gain is more pronounced in the case of conventional production but also occurs for organic production in the second stage the crops efficiency scores are regressed against some exogenous variables using a fractional regression model the regression results confirm that organic production significantly decreases inefficiency and they also indicate that the larger the farm the larger the inefficiency and that growing barley is more inefficient than wheat

estimation of output and input technical efficiency using a flexible functional form and panel data the farrell 1957 concept of technical efficiency can be measured in two ways denoted output and input technical efficiency the empirical literature does not distinguish between the two measures and confusion exists regarding the required restrictions on technology for the specification of either measure with panel data the authors show how both types of efficiency when treated as fixed effects are to be specified in the context of a translog cost system technical efficiency enters the share equations only in the output case when homotheticity is not imposed the authors estimate their cost systems using panel data on u s airlines copyright 1994 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

farmers objectives as determinants of organic farming adoption the case of catalonian vineyard production this article assesses the decision to adopt organic farming practices we use duration analysis da to determine why farmers adopt organic farming practices and what influences the timing of adoption we extend previous studies by including farmers objectives risk preferences and agricultural policies as covariates in the da model the analytical hierarchy process is used as a multicriteria decision making methodology to measure farmers objectives the empirical analysis uses farm level data from a sample of vineyard farms in the spanish region of catalonia farmers objectives are found to influence the conversion decision moreover farmers who are not risk averse are more likely to adopt organic farming results point to the policy changes that have been most relevant in motivating adoption of organic practices

econometric estimation of technical and environmental efficiency an application to dutch dairy farms in this article we estimate the technical and environmental efficiency of a panel of dutch dairy farms nitrogen surplus arising from the application of excessive amounts of manure and chemical fertilizer is treated as an environmentally detrimental input a stochastic translog production frontier is specified to estimate the output oriented technical efficiency environmental efficiency is estimated as the input oriented technical efficiency of a single input the nitrogen surplus of each farm the mean output oriented technical efficiency is rather high 0 894 but the mean input oriented environmental efficiency is only 0 441 intensive dairy farms are both technically and environmentally more efficient than extensive farms

optimal monetary policy in a regime switching economy the response to abrupt shifts in exchange rate dynamics abstract this paper examines the trade offs that a central bank faces when the exchange rate can experience sustained deviations from fundamentals and occasionally collapse the economy is modelled as switching randomly between different regimes according to time invariant transition probabilities we compute both the optimal regime switching control rule for this economy and optimised linear taylor rules in the two cases where the transition probabilities are known with certainty and where they are uncertain the simple algorithms used in the computation are also of independent interest as tools for the study of monetary policy under general forms of asymmetric additive and multiplicative uncertainty an interesting finding is that policies based on robust minmax values of the transition probabilities are usually more conservative

the unemployment rate consequences of partisan monetary policies economists and political scientists have identified several ways in which political motivations and institutional arrangements can affect macroeconomic policymaking one way is described by the political business cycle model 42 37 in which vote seeking politicians manipulate the path of the economy to secure unsustainably favorable conditions at election times variants of this model have been widely tested with limited success a second channel for political impacts comes through partisan policy changes brought about by electoral turnover the pathbreaking work in this literature includes the contributions of hibbs 30 31 32 33 and beck 11 these works have focused on the empirical issue of how unemployment rates vary under democratic and republican presidents in the u s and have found strong support for the proposition that unemployment rates decline under democratic administrations a third phenomenon has been studied primarily by economists and concerns the credibility problem faced by a central bank selecting money growth rates models of the credibility problem 8 21 describe a setting in which the central bank and the public interact by respectively choosing actual and expected money growth rates in a variant of the prisoners dilemma this interaction can result in excessive inflation

factors affecting the technical efficiency among smallholder farmers in the slash and burn agriculture zone of cameroon abstract this paper estimates technical efficiency among small holder farmers in the slash and burn agriculture zone of cameroon and identifies sources of inefficiency using detailed survey data obtained from 450 farmers over 15 villages throughout 2001 2002 growing season we find that the mean levels of technical efficiency are 77 73 and 75 respectively for groundnut monocrop maize monocrop and maize groundnut farming systems suggesting existence of substantial gains in output and or decreases in cost with available technology and resources the efficiency differences are explained significantly by credit soil fertility social capital distance of the plot from the access road and extension services policy recommendations are drawn from these findings

a generalized production frontier approach for estimating determinants of inefficiency in u s dairy farms this article investigates farm level efficiency of u s dairy farmers by estimating their technical and allocative efficiency technical inefficiency is assumed to be composed of a deterministic component that is a function of some farm specific characteristics and a random component by doing this we extend the stochastic frontier methodology in which determinants of technicial inefficiency are explicitly introduced in the model given the inputs variations in efficiency of farms are then explained by both deterministic and random components of technical inefficiency the empirical results indicate that a levels of education of the farmer are important factors determining technical inefficiency and b large farms are more efficient technically than small and medium sized farms both technical and allocative inefficiency are found to decrease with increase in the level of education of the farmer

technical efficiency of alternative farming systems the case of greek organic and conventional olive growing farms abstract olive growing is a major farming activity in greek agriculture this paper analyzes empirically the technical efficiency of organic and conventional olive growing farms using a stochastic production frontier methodology and a translog functional specification findings indicate that the organic olive growing farms examined exhibit a higher degree of technical efficiency relative to their production frontier than do conventional olive growing farms reasons may include lower profit margins and restrictions on inputs permitted thus forcing organic farmers to be more cautious with input use however both input and output oriented technical efficiency scores are still relatively low for both types of olive farming thus there is considerable scope for cost reducing and farm income improvement in both farming modes this could prove crucial for the long run viability and the future course of the sector

conversion subsidies for organic production results from sweden and lessons for the united states organic conversion subsidies used in europe are less likely to be politically acceptable in the united states where organic agriculture development is market driven persistent barriers to conversion in the united states include limited availability of and access to production and market information training in management systems and cost of conversion related investments by determining whether these factors affect the requirement of a subsidy to convert we can suggest whether u s policy makers need to provide subsidies to encourage conversion and identify policy variables consistent with market based approaches that could stimulate conversion a utility difference model is used with swedish data to analyze factors that determine whether a subsidy is required to motivate organic conversion the results show that farmers requiring subsidies manage larger less diversified farms and are more concerned with organic inspection quality and adequacy of technical advice access to more market outlets and information sources substitutes for payment level in the farmer s utility function indicating that services rather than subsidies may be used to encourage organic agriculture to the extent that conditions are similar in the u s organic sector market based programs such as cost sharing for conversion and market access improvement should stimulate growth of this industry 2000 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

fossil fuels stock externalities and backstop technology the hotelling exhaustible resource model is extended to include stock pollution and nonpolluting backstop technology it is shown that an optimal energy consumption strategy typically includes a regime in which the two energy sources are consumed simultaneously along this regime fossil fuel consumption decreases and backstop consumption increases together fossil fuel and backstop consumption may form eleven optimal regime combinations a decrease in the backstop price decreases the initial level of optimal emission tax

forecast uncertainty ex ante and ex post u s inflation and output growth survey respondents who make point predictions and histogram forecasts of macro variables reveal both how uncertain they believe the future to be ex ante as well as their ex post performance macroeconomic forecasters tend to be overconfident at horizons of a year or more but overestimate i e are underconfident regarding the uncertainty surrounding their predictions at short horizons ex ante uncertainty remains at a high level compared to the ex post measure as the forecast horizon shortens there is little evidence of a link between individuals ex post forecast accuracy and their ex ante subjective assessments

profit efficiency among bangladeshi rice farmers abstract production inefficiency is usually analyzed by its three components technical allocative and scale efficiency in this study we provide a direct measure of production efficiency of the bangladeshi rice farmers using a stochastic profit frontier and inefficiency effects model the data which are for 1996 include seven conventional inputs and several other background factors affecting production of modern or high yielding varieties hyvs of rice spread across 21 villages in three agro ecological regions of bangladesh the results show that there are high levels of inefficiency in modern rice cultivation the mean level of profit efficiency is 77 suggesting that an estimated 23 of the profit is lost due to a combination of technical allocative and scale inefficiency in modern rice production the efficiency differences are explained largely by infrastructure soil fertility experience extension services tenancy and share of non agricultural income

the measurement of productive efficiency a reconsideration the purpose of this paper is to generalize the farrell indexes of productive efficiency to nonhomothetic production technologies and at the same time maintain the cost interpretation of the farrell measures since the generalized indexes rely heavily on recent developments in the estimation of frontier cost and production functions several frontier models are reviewed in addition to generalized indexes of technical allocative and overall productive efficiency a variety of single factor efficiency measures are discussed the applicability of the proposed efficiency measures is illustrated with a numerical example of electric power generation

indexation and the effect of inflation uncertainty on real gnp this article examines the combined effects of inflation uncertainty and indexation on the growth rate of real gross national product gn p the evidence suggests that greater indexation partially reduces t he adverse effect of inflation uncertainty on real gnp growth over time it also indicates that in contrast to earlier findings regarding th e effect of inflation uncertainty on employment the overall effect of inflation uncertainty on real gnp growth may be permanent a preliminary assessment of whether the discrepancy is the result of in flation uncertainty permanently affecting the growth rate of the capi tal stock is inconclusive copyright 1988 by the university of chicago

productive efficiency of specialty and conventional coffee farmers in costa rica accounting for technological heterogeneity and self selection a steep decline in coffee prices at the producer level led to considerable pressure for farmers in costa rica and producer countries all over the world one possible reaction was moving to specialty markets where price pressure was perceived to be lower we use original survey data from 2002 2003 and 2003 2004 to analyze the factors influencing participation in specialty markets and to estimate separate production functions for specialty and conventional coffee farmers allowing for farm specific inefficiencies applying a sample selection framework we find significant selection bias in the sub sample of specialty farmers and evidence for the overestimation of efficiency if this bias is not adequately controlled for among the most important factors that influence farm specific efficiency levels in the two sub samples are the availability of additional income activities experience in coffee cultivation and membership in cooperatives based on the results we derive policy recommendations to improve farmers production performance and ability to cope with the effects of the coffee crisis these policy measures include the provision of extension services with respect to farm management skills the creation of income opportunities in rural areas and the support of farmer owned cooperatives

consensus and uncertainty in economic prediction we define consensus as the degree of agreement among point predictions aimed at the same target by different individuals and uncertainty as the diffuseness of the corresponding probability distributions this distinction is made operational with the aid of the nber asa survey data on matched point and probabilistic forecasts of inflation and the rate of change in gross national product the means of the two sets of forecasts agree closely standard deviations of point forecasts tend to understate uncertainty as measured by standard deviations of the predictive probability distributions however these measures of consensus and uncertainty are on the whole positively correlated there is evidence that expectations of higher inflation generate greater uncertainty about inflation tests also favor the hypothesis that a rise in inflation uncertainty has adverse effects on real growth

environmental impacts of technological change in bangladesh agriculture farmers perceptions determinants and effects on resource allocation decisions this article measures the impact of modern technology adoption in raising farmers environmental awareness and the impact of farmers environmental awareness on resource use by utilizing survey data from 21 villages in three agro ecological regions of bangladesh the econometric analysis is based on the application of the tobit model explaining farmers environmental awareness in the first stage and a profit function examining environmental awareness and resource use relationships in the second stage results reveal that the level and duration of involvement with modern technology raises farmers environmental awareness and that farmers environmental awareness reduces resource use including chemicals farmers who are aware of the adverse environmental impacts of modern agricultural technology use lower amounts of all inputs in order to avoid further environmental damage therefore efforts to raise farmers environmental awareness are expected to enhance intangible benefits accruing from a relatively less chemical intensive environment

optimal regime switching and threshold effects we consider a general control problem with two types of optimal regime switch the first one concerns technological and or institutional regimes indexed by a finite number of discrete parameter values and the second features regimes relying on given threshold values for given state variables we propose a general optimal control framework allowing to derive the first order optimality conditions and in particular to characterize the geometry of the shadow prices at optimal switching times if any we apply this new optimal control material to address the problem of the optimal management of natural resources under ecological irreversibility and with the possibility to switch to a backstop technology

technical efficiency of kansas arable crop farms a local maximum likelihood approach this study uses local maximum likelihood lml methods recently proposed by kumbhakar et al 2007 to assess the technical efficiency of arable crop kansas farms lml techniques overcome the most relevant limitations associated to mainstream parametric stochastic and nonparametric frontier models lml allows deriving farm level frontier parameter estimates the relevance of using localized estimates is evidenced by the observed heterogeneity in production technologies technical efficiency scores derived from the lml approach 0 905 are higher than those of the dea model under crs 0 808 and sfa 0 804 and close to dea vrs 0 917 ratings deriving reliable information about farm efficiency performance is relevant to identify inefficient farms and define adequate policy and management strategies the use of refined methods has thus important implications