why farmers quit a county level analysis we identify the effects of alternative explanatory variables on the propensity of u s farmers to cease farming with a particular emphasis on understanding the roles of off farm employment and federal farm program payments conventional ordinary least squares analysis using all counties suggests that off farm employment has no statistical effect on the net number of farmers quitting between 1987 and 1997 ceteris paribus a more refined analysis which separates counties losing farmers from those that gained farmers reveals subtle and less clear cut effects of off farm employment and federal program payments on farm exits copyright 2001 oxford university press

measurement of social well being alternatives to gross domestic product abstract gross domestic product gdp is widely acknowledged to be a poor measure of social well being this paper surveys several substitutes for and modifications of gdp which have been offered as measures of society s welfare the index of sustainable economic welfare a measure endorsed by many ecological economists is found to possess a variety of virtues but also several imperfections the search for a social welfare measure has not yet ended

technology and u s corn yields plateaus and price responsiveness corn yields in the united states have increased at a slower rate during the 1970s than in the previous two decades fitting straight lines to aggregate corn yields over the period 1954 80 figure 1 suggests a curvilinear relationship different slopes are obtained by splitting the sample at any one of the years 1969 1970 1971 for the split shown in figure 1 the slope is 2 67 for 1954 70 and 1 34 for 197180 since 1970 events have caused corn yields to drop the 1970 corn blight drought in 1974 and 1980 and drops in nitrogen application rates in 1974 and 1975 whether the slowdown in corn yield increases is temporary permanent or signals a plateauing of u s corn yields is not clear swanson and nyankori to analyze this issue the recent historical data 1954 80 on u s corn yields is examined swanson cautioned against extrapolating past trends into the future without decomposing technology into its components multicollinearity problems dictate a limited decomposition into nitrogen and nonnitrogen components the basis for this distinction is found in microagronomic data a second objective is to check whether developments over the last decade have significantly changed the elasticity of u s corn yields with respect to the fertilizer corn price ratio

resource degradation technical change and the productivity of energy use in u s agriculture abstract two important issues surrounding future food production are the reliance of industrial agriculture on large quantities of fossil fuels and the degree to which technical change and farm management can offset degradation in the form of soil erosion groundwater depletion reduced genetic diversity pest resistance and so on this analysis uses new and more consistent data on energy use in u s agriculture to assess the forces that shape the productivity of energy use from 1950 to 1990 the results of an econometric model indicate that changes in the quantity of energy used per hectare the average size of farms the quantity of land harvested the ratio of livestock to crop production and weather influence the productivity of energy use in order of decreasing importance energy productivity shows strong diminishing returns to increases in energy use per hectare of land the model indirectly tests for the effects of of resource degradation and technical change on energy productivity the results do not support the hypothesis that the effects of soil erosion and other forms of resource degradation have diminished the productivity of energy use in the u s farm sector presumably due to advances in technology and behavioral responses on the part of farmers the significant increase in energy productivity since 1980 is due to a sharp reduction in energy use per hectare a reduction in the quantity of land utilized and continuing increases in average farm size these results are consistent with other empirical analyses of aggregate energy productivity in industrial agriculture that indicate an improvement in energy productivity in response to the energy price increases

testing for unit roots in panel data are wages on different bargaining levels cointegrated theoritical considerations suggest that spillover forces equalize wages for similar jobs thus it is expected that firm wages are cointegrated with the corresponding wage rates on an industrial level in this paper we apply various unit root tests to a panel of wage data we show that the familiar techniques can be adopted to this type of data allowing for unobserved heterogeneity and common time effects our results suggest that firm and industry wages both possess a unit root in the autoregressive representation however ther is only weak evidence for a cointegration realtionship

the persistence of profit differentials in indian industry the competitive process in a market economy is expected to work to eliminate profit differentials between firms industries in the long run in the indian case we note that quite a large number of industries experience above average profits that persist over time our analysis show that such persistence is higher in fast growing industries with high strategic barriers on the other hand government controls seem to be very effective in discouraging such persistence

age size growth and survival uk companies in the 1980s this paper examines growth and survival amongst quoted and unquoted u k companies in the period 1975 85 and compares the results with earlier u k and u s studies an examination of death rates shows that smaller companies had higher death rates but the largest and smallest companies were least vulnerable to takeover careful attention is therefore paid to problems of sample selection bias it is shown that smaller companies grew faster than larger companies that gibrat s law does not hold amongst smaller firms that age is negatively related to growth and that these results are not an artifact of sample selection bias copyright 1994 by blackwell publishing ltd

the persistence of profit a new empirical interpretation abstract inferences are drawn about the true coefficients which correspond to sample estimates of a persistence of profit model fitted over a large number of firms this is done by generating simulated sampling distributions for the estimators over various distributional assumptions profits seem to be stationary for all firms with an average short run persistence coefficient of 0 59 higher than most previous estimates long run profit rates differ between firms although by less than is suggested by direct observation of variations in mean profit rates calculated over time short run persistence appears to be inversely related to unsystematic variation in profit

export sectors and rural development the export base hypothesis is that a region s growth is led by export demand given perfectly elastic factor supplies it is a rationale for sector based rural development policies and it is formalized by input output models but it is contested by modern trade migration and growth theories and there is little research about its empirical relevance we investigate the hypothesis for contemporary u s rural development by estimating the influence of export sector employment on subsequent rural development outcomes the results reject the hypothesis that emphasizing traditional export employment results in rural growth reject the assumption of perfectly elastic factor supply and support alternative explanations copyright 2009 oxford university press

the role of technology in sustaining agriculture and the environment abstract visions of sustainable development often leave unanswered the question what actions taken by the current generation will ensure that future generations can meet their economic and environmental needs in this context we assess the role of technology in steering agriculture along a more sustainable path from the agricultural sector s perspective this requires an optimal investment plan for a nation s stock of environmental assets that accounts for an intergenerational fulfillment of sustainability s dual goals 1 satisfying food and fiber needs at reasonable costs to consumers and 2 providing environmental service flows in reviewing agricultural indicators to assess the nation s performance in meeting these goals we find productivity growth has increased while rates of soil erosion wetland conversion and pesticide application have declined however individuals continue to demand more environmental services while private markets undersupply environmental services the capacity of the agricultural sector to meet food and fiber and environmental service demands partially depends on the availability and adoption of new technology several market impediments explain the undersupply of sustainable technologies 1 firms cannot fully appropriate rents from technology development 2 success may vary with farm structure 3 the heterogeneity of the resource base influences adoption and 4 farmers cannot capture the benefits of environmental services to address these market failures sustainable agriculture policy should 1 support research and development in sustainable technologies and provide incentives to encourage adoption 2 ensure that conservation efforts reflect the efficient and sustainable allocation of environmental assets and 3 legitimize markets for foods produced under more sustainable practices

the persistence of profits a european comparison this paper is concerned with modeling the movements in profits of firms over time at the heart of the emp irical model is a latent variables problem which arises from the fact that entry and imitation do not actually have to occur to have an ef fect on profits a solution to this problem is explored and then emp irical results are presented comparing a sample of firms from the uni ted kingdom france and west germany copyright 1988 by royal economic society

corporate growth and profitability this paper argues that current period corporate growth rates reflect changes in current expectations about the long run profitability of a firm this means that growth rates are likely to vary randomly over time using data from 271 large quoted uk firms over the period 1976 1982 we report the existence of a positive statistically significant and robust correlation between current period growth rates and a natural measure of changes in current expectations about long run profitability namely changes in the stock market valuation of the firm nevertheless we find that variations in corporate growth rates are difficult to predict

simulation of concentration development from modified gibrat growth entry exit processes gibrat s law is augmented to produce a more general stochastic model of concentration consisting of growth entry and exit processes empirical facts on growth entry and exit reported elsewhere are employed to calibrate the model which is then repeatedly simulated generating concentration data for 280 hypothetical industries grouped under fourteen types the simulated data are used to investigate the importance of growth entry and exit in shaping concentration development most important is systematic firm level growth entry and exit are much less significant as is random growth variability which features prominently in previous stochastic models parallels with previous interindustry research are drawn copyright 1995 by blackwell publishing ltd

tobin s q and the importance of focus in firm performance using tobin s q as a measure of performance we seek to estimate the relative importance of industry focus and share effects in determining firm performance our methods are analogous to those of richard schmalensee and like him we find that industry effects account for the majority of the explained variance however we also find that firm effects exist in the form of focus effects that is narrowly diversified firms do better than widely diversified firms we interpret this finding as consistent with profit maximization by firms with different factor endowments

seller concentration the technological explanation and demand uncertainty the level of seller concentration in an industry depends on two characteristics of the size distribution of the firms concerned their number and the inequality of their sizes acknowledging these two dimensions the aim of this paper is to construct a unified theoretical framework capable of shedding some light on the economic forces which determine the degree of concentration it builds on the analysis of two schools of thought within the existing literature the first of these we shall label the technological explanation of concentration since it emphasises the role of the cost curve in particular the minimum efficient scale of production and barriers to the entry of new firms implicitly this attaches most importance to the firm number component of concentration the second school includes the various stochastic models of firm growth these models have demonstrated the influence on concentration of what is sometimes called luck or more deterministically those factors which might influence the spread of growth rates of firms within an industry to that extent these models emphasise the other component of concentration size inequalities we see our present contribution as an attempt to build a bridge between these two approaches we develop the well known simon and bonini i958 stochastic growth model in such a way as to provide a formal statement of the technological explanation and then discuss various ways of deepening the economic content of their original contribution section i provides a brief resume of the technological explanation and section ii describes the salient features of the simon and bonini model it goes on to show how this model can be used to disentangle a mathematical relationship between the concentration ratio and i minimum efficient scale ii the share of sub optimal firms and iii the degree of firm size inequalities this relationship is tested with some success using i968 uk census data an important conclusion of the simon and bonini model is that firm size inequalities depend crucially on the probability of entry by new firms section iii considers how this proposition may be invested with more economic content the discussion is couched at a fairly general level but in the appendix we suggest a specific model which explains entry as a consequence of the fact that incumbent firms typically operate in a world of demand uncertainty where entry deterrence may be too costly it provides specific economic predictions

do firm sizes and profit rates converge evidence on gibrat s law and the persistence of profits in the long run three panel unit root tests are applied to a 31 year firm size growth and profit rate data set for 96 large quoted uk firms all tests reject the unit root null for log size if the augmented dickey fuller autoregressions exclude a linear time trend if a linear trend is included the results are more ambiguous and appear to differ systematically between tests the view that firm growth is either random or near random does not receive unequivocal support in all tests there is however strong and consistent evidence of mean reversion in profit rates

persistence of profitability and competition in emerging markets abstract this paper reports on time series analyses of the persistence of profitability of firms in emerging markets its central result is that there is less persistence in developing than in advanced economies the implications for the intensity of competition in emerging markets are examined

farm production policy versus rural life policy for more than two decades the rural development division of the economic research service of the u s department of agriculture along with most of the university community engaged in rural development research argued that farm policy is no longer sufficient rural development policy at the end of the 1980s it appeared that continuous repetition had made an impact the 1990 farm bill contained a title that included far more rural policy than had been seen since the 1970s and members of congress actually appeared to have become comfortable talking about the need for a rural policy that was something other than farm policy similarly in the early 1990s the canadian government created a rural secretariat within agriculture canada that was to coordinate the activities of all ministries when those activities

the persistence of shocks to profitability in this study we use data for 1981 through 1994 on a large sample of u s companies to examine the persistence of incremental industry corporate parent and business specific effects on profitability our results indicate that the incremental effects of industry on profitability persist longer than the incremental effects of the corporate parent and of the specific business changes in industry structure have a more persistent impact on profitability than do changes in firm structure

jobs and agricultural policy impact of the common agricultural policy on eu agricultural employment abstract this paper investigates the relationship between eu agricultural subsidies and the outflow of labor from agriculture we use more representative subsidy indicators and a wider coverage panel data from 210 eu regions over the period 2004 2014 than has been used before the data allow to better correct for sample selection bias than previous empirical studies we find that on average cap subsidies reduce the outflow of labor from agriculture but the effect is almost entirely due to decoupled pillar i payments coupled pillar i payments have no impact on reducing labor outflow from agriculture i e on preserving jobs in agriculture the impact of pillar ii is mixed our estimates predict that an increase of 10 percent of the cap budget would prevent an extra 16 000 people from leaving the eu agriculture sector each year a 10 percent decoupling would save 13 000 agricultural jobs each year however the budgetary costs are large the estimated cost is more than 300 000 per year or more than 25 000 per month per job saved in agriculture

rural population decline in the 1980s impacts of farm structure and federal farm programs federal farm program benefits accrue disproportionately to large scale farm operators and continue largely because of the political influence of their beneficiaries some writers argue that these payments stem the movement of labor out of agriculture ultimately reducing the pace of rural depopulation here a theoretical model linking farm program payments to population loss is presented and empirically estimated for the years 1980 90 larger farm program payments as a share of total cash marketing receipts were associated with greater population losses from rural counties this result holds after controlling for other economic variables affecting population migration from rural areas

does the persistence of profits persist a study of company profits in japan 1964 97 abstract earlier in a time series study of the profit rates of japanese manufacturing firms odagiri and yamawaki concluded that profits persist with the addition of 15 more years of data up to 1997 this conclusion is shown to stand the test of time in particular those firms estimated to earn higher than average long run profit rates in the early study were again estimated to earn higher than average long run profit rates the force of convergence was also found to be at work for instance the firms most profitable in period 1 1964 82 were most likely to face a decline in estimated long run profit rates from period 1 to period 2 1983 97 with the use of two sets of data the firm s profit performance was found to be positively related to measures of market share first among a smaller sample of firms for which reliable market share data could be matched market share was estimated to have a significant positive effect on long run profit rate in either period secondly among the entire sample of 357 firms the long run profit rate in either period was estimated to be positively associated with firm sales relative to industry sales which presumably is a crude measure of market share

intangible resources tobin s q and sustainability of performance differences this paper tests empirically the hypothesis that the greater the intangibility of a firm s resources the greater the sustainability of its competitive advantage resource intangibility is measured by 1 tobin s q and 2 the predicted value from a hedonic regression of q on several accounting measures of intangibles sustainability is measured by the persistence of firm specific profits using a dynamic panel data regression model i find that intangibles play an effective role in sustaining a firm s competitive advantage as predicted by the resource based view of the firm however the results suggest that intangibles can also lock firms into persistent disadvantages

industry differences in the persistence of firm specific returns some firms such as kellogg nestle hewlett packard and boeing have consistently earned significantly higher returns than their immediate competitors why do intraindustry rents persist for these firms competition typically erodes these rents as evidenced by the strong convergence of firm profitability to the industry mean illustrated in figure 1 i claim that the persistence of these firmspecific rents depends at least partly on industry economic structure similar to richard e caves and michael e porter s 1977 mobility barriers so the rents are more persistent in some industries than others in this paper i test which of the theoretical industry factors are significant to support my claim i also show that the persistence of abnormal returns differs widely and systematically across industries for example an industry with highly persistent profitability differences is the american automobile industry in the 1970 s as illustrated by figure 2 which graphs differences in returns on assets roa s over time throughout the 1970 s general motors maintained a persistent significant profitability advantage over ford while ford held a persistent advantage over chrysler this situation did change later but it is still true that during the 1970 s there was no apparent convergence of profitability differences among the big three auto makers a comparison of figures 1 and 2 suggests that the economy wide result of figure 1 is merely an average over very different industries with convergence rates ranging from almost zero as in automobiles in the 1970 s to very rapid my methods for estimating persistence of above average returns improve on previous studies in several ways first i only consider the persistence of returns around the industry mean the persistence of this intra industry or firm specific rent rather than total rent has not been previously investigated yet the factors affecting firm specific rents need not be the same as those affecting industry rents second i estimate persistence in several ways finally i use a wider range of explanatory variables than earlier studies this study is structured as follows section i explains the concept of persistent firmspecific rents later sections specify the empirical model and estimate persistence by industry section ii theoretically relate industry factors to these varying persistence estimates section iii discuss cross sectional regression estimates section iv and provide conclusions section v

environmental sustainability in agriculture diet matters abstract there is no agreement that diet matters for environmental sustainability in the agriculture sector much current agriculture is unsustainable and worsening the environmental impact of agriculture degrades natural capital e g loss of topsoil waste and pollution of water nutrient loss extinction of species cattle raising is one of the most damaging components of agriculture livestock now eat about half of global grain production there is limited scope for improving food supply and what scope there is will further damage the environment all means to improve nutrition especially for the poor will be needed as population increases one such means is to improve diets of the rich by eating lower down the food chain while most people in the world thrive on mainly grain based diets carnivory is high in oecd and is increasing in ldcs in order to reduce food wastage and to improve health and food availability a food conversion efficiency tax is proposed the least efficient converters pork beef would be highly taxed more efficient converters poultry eggs dairy would be moderately taxed most efficient converters ocean fish would be taxed lowest grain for human food would not be taxed while coarse grains might be modestly subsidized non food agriculture also would be taxed highest on tobacco and on starches destined for alcoholic beverages produced from land suitable for food production

are differences in firm size transitory or permanent an erratum for this article has been published in journal of applied econometrics 18 2 2003 249 previous empirical work on corporate growth rates using cross section or short panel econometric techniques suggests that growth rates are random but that some degree of mean reversion exists this means that size differences between firms are transitory another more natural way to explore the long run distribution of firm sizes is to examine data on the growth of particular firms over long periods of time using a sample of 147 uk firms observed continually for more than 30 years our conclusions are that growth rates are highly variable over time and that differences in growth rates between firms do not persist for very long further firms show no tendency to converge to either a common size or to a pattern of stable size differences over time these results are compared and contrasted with standard approaches that suggest that firms reach and maintain stable positions in a skewed size distribution copyright 2002 john wiley sons ltd

profit persistence in the very long run evidence from survivors and exiters one of the main shortcomings of the profit persistence literature is the fact that it looks only at surviving companies this paper uses a unique dataset to analyse profit persistence in two different samples of stationary series 85 surviving us companies from 1950 1999 and 72 exiters while the exiters perform more competitively than the survivors there is still significant evidence for profit persistence in both samples concentration and growth of the industry as well as size and volatility of profits seem to play an important role in explaining persistence

is energy cost an accurate indicator of natural resource quality abstract the use of energy cost as an indicator of natural resource quality is examined energy cost is the direct and indirect energy used to produce a unit of a resource commodity different approaches to the role of energy in the economy are discussed and it is demonstrated theoretically that energy cost can give false indications of changes in resource quality this is because energy cost is only an accurate indicator of resource quality if either energy is the single primary factor of production and the economy can be represented by an input output model or if there is substitutability between the factors of production then marginal products must be proportional to the factors embodied energy these conditions are tested empirically using data from the us agricultural sector the results show that there is substitutability and marginal products are not proportional to embodied energy however the strong neoclassical assumption of price taking profit maximization can be rejected at a 5 level of significance though not at the 3 5 level the generality of the empirical results may be restricted due to data limitations but the theoretical framework can be applied to other data sets other resources and even other indicators

persistence of profits in the long run a critical extension of some recent findings abstract recent discussions of the persistence of profits question have focussed on two econometric firm models which have been validated for several countries the paper gives a brief summary of the model concepts and of the most important findings for the countries in question both models are then applied to a data bank of german enterprises providing new results for one of them which has not been realized in germany yet finally the estimation results of the two models are examined by variance analysis this reveals that the convergence process is stronger than it has ever been perceived

rural population growth 1950 1990 the roles of human capital industry structure and government policy human capital raises rural incomes but this effect is swamped by higher returns to human capital in urban markets this leads to brain drain from rural areas populations grow more rapidly in rural counties that have a diversified employment base farm population grows faster or declines more slowly in counties with relatively high farm income and nonfarm populations grow faster in counties with relatively high nonfarm income however higher farm incomes lead to slower nonfarm population growth and vice versa rural county government services financed by local taxes or debt have neutral or negative effects on population growth rural population in the united states increased 53 between 1900 and 1990 this increase is concentrated in the nonfarm rural sector where population has grown to three times its turn of the century level nevertheless there exists a concern that rural areas are threatened by population declines that will gradually erode the ability of communities to provide public services necessary for their citizens eventually the fear is that these communities will become too small to be selfsustaining and will disappear one might ask why these concerns exist in the face of slowly rising rural populations one reason is that the overall rural population increase masks a huge migration of labor off the farm the rural farm population has fallen to one tenth its 1900 level if a strong farm economy is necessary to sustain rural communities then the farm population decline is a threat to the future viability of rural communities on the other hand off farm employment opportunities are increasingly important to the

the determinants of the migration of labor out of agriculture in the united states 1940 85 the flow of labor out of production agriculture is analyzed using a two sector model of occupational choice a migration equation is specified and tested empirically using aggregate data for the united states the economic determinants of the migration of all farm workers and farm operators are established farm labor is found to be responsive to changes in the returns to agricultural labor relative to nonfarm labor returns given this responsiveness policies intended to increase farm income will affect the level of agricultural employment

sunk costs firm size and firm growth for several decades the conventional wisdom has been that expected firm growth rates are independent of firm size a property known as gibrat s law however recent empirical work has found a negative relation between firm growth and firm size this paper provides a theoretical explanation for this negative relation in a model of new firm growth where capacity and technology choices involve some degree of sunkness additional empirical implications of the theory of sunk costs are also developed these relate to profit rates tobin s q exit rates degree of sunkness of capacity costs as well as size and growth rates copyright 1995 by blackwell publishing ltd

the role of energy productivity in u s agriculture abstract this paper investigates the role of energy on u s agricultural productivity using panel data at the state level for the period 1960 2004 we first provide a historical account of energy use in u s agriculture to do this we rely on the bennet cost indicator to study how the price and volume components of energy costs have developed over time we then proceed to analyze the contribution of energy to productivity in u s agriculture employing the bennet bowley productivity indicator an important feature of the bennet bowley indicator is its direct association with the change in normalized profits thus our study is also able to analyze the link between profitability and productivity panel regression estimates indicate that energy prices have a negative effect on profitability in the u s agricultural sector we also find that energy productivity has generally remained below total farm productivity following the 1973 1974 global energy crisis

the dynamics of company profits an international comparison 1 profits and the process of competition dennis c mueller 2 modelling persistent profitability paul a geroski 3 the persistence of profits in the united states dennis c mueller 4 the persistence of profits in us manufacturing industries ioannis kessides 5 the persistence of profitability in canada r shyam khemani and d m shapiro 6 persistence of corporate profits in the federal republic of germany joachim schwalbach and talat mahmood 7 the persistence of profits in france frederic jenny and andre paul weber 8 the persistence of profits in japan hiroyuki odagiri and hideki yamawaki 9 the persistence of profits in the uk john cubbin and paul a geroski 10 the persistence of profits international comparison hiroyuki odagiri and hideki yamawaki 11 the persistence of profits in perspective paul a geroski and dennis c mueller