adapting contract theory to fit contract farming this article discusses the current state of contract theory and its usefulness for conceptualizing issues related to agricultural contracting i will discuss the limitations of existing theory for applied work and what methodological improvements are needed to enhance the usefulness of the theory to agricultural economists one pervasive problem is that the canonical economic literature on contracts is rather fragmented and the various methodological strands are narrow in their focus as such there is a need for agricultural economists to engage in methodological research to develop applied contracting models that can capture higher order features of real world agricultural contracts while delivering generalizable comparative statics predictions the need for such research is obvious as contracting continues to expand along the entire modern food marketing channel in the latter part of this article i develop a simple model to illustrate how classic methodological approaches can be combined with recent developments in contract and game theory to construct applied theory models that are useful for capturing some important features of agricultural contracts

partial vertical integration risk shifting and product rejection in the high value export supply chain the ghana pineapple sector summary high value export supply chains hold potential to improve smallholders welfare but their relative production inefficiency and moral hazard problems can cause exporters to prefer vertically integrated plantation production however pineapple exporters in ghana produce both for their own account and purchase from smallholders we hypothesize that vertical integration is only partial because exporters face large market risks that smallholders surprisingly are better able to absorb we show empirically that exporters average rejection rate of export quality fruit is high and varies in response to unanticipated fluctuations in european demand these results support the hypothesis and are consistent with theories of partial vertical integration but not the standard principal agent paradigm

limited liability and incentive contracting with ex ante action choices abstract this article examines a principal agent model of financial contracting in which a risk neutral entrepreneur agent makes an unobservable ex ante effort choice while employing the investment funds of a risk neutral investor principal the key innovation is that the investment contract is subject to statutory liability limits given these liability limits two settings are considered one in which the investor payoff function is also constrained to be monotonically nondecreasing in firm profit and another in which no such monotonic contract constraint is imposed in the former case a standard debt contract is shown to emerge and a first best effort choice is not achieved in the latter setting the optimum is characterized by a live or die payoff function and a first best effort level may or may not be realized

buyer supplier interaction asset specificity and product choice abstract firms often differentiate their products through the use of inputs that are differentiated or specialized the goal of this paper is to explore how the demand for specific investments may affect product variety in a bilateral duopolistic industry i develop a model where the degree of specificity of investments is endogenously determined through the product choices of both downstream buyers and upstream suppliers of inputs the existence of non contractible investments results in the emergence of a single supplier of a non specialized input however as the importance of having specific inputs increases fully specialized suppliers may emerge the buyers choose to increase their own competition by producing more similar products only in cases when the inputs are non specialized they do so to increase the investment incentives of the suppliers

market structure and resource depletion a contribution to the theory of intertemporal monopolistic competition a the theory of resource extraction in the model we present there exists a produced substitute to the natural resource the primary question with which we are concerned is the interaction of the resource and its substitute the model we present can thus be thought as providing a link between rent and production based price theories one of the general results in the earlier literature on resource extraction is that deposits with lower extraction costs will be exploited first the analysis

competition risk and managerial incentives this paper examines how the degree of competition among firms in an industry affects the optimal incentives that firms provide to their managers a central assumption is that there is free entry and exit in the industry which implies that changes in the nature of competition lead to changes in the equilibrium market structure the main result is that as the intensity of product market competition increases as a result of greater product substitutability or greater market size principals unambiguously provide stronger incentives to their agents to reduce costs at the same time more intense competition also leads to more volatile firm level profits consequently managers incentives are positively correlated with firm level risk consistent with empirical evidence a decrease in the cost of entering the market has the opposite effect on incentives but still induces a positive correlation between risk and incentives

chasing after good jobs do they exist and does it matter if they do most people believe that there are such things as good jobs jobs that a worker would consider herself lucky to get but for economists the existence of good jobs is debatable in this paper i provide a definition of a good job based on various theories of the labour market a job that involves a surplus captured partly by the worker i use that definition to guide an empirical investigation of the existence and importance of good jobs i conclude that good jobs do exist that the labour market does not just function according to a roy model with wage differentials reflecting only skill differentials compensating differentials or bond posting and that their impact on the overall wage structure is substantial finally i discuss the implications of the existence of good jobs for policy setting and for assessments of the justice of a society resume la chasse aux bons emplois est ce qu ils existent et est ce que cela importe qu ils existent la plupart des gens croient qu il y a telles choses que de bons emplois des emplois qu un travailleur se trouverait chanceux d avoir mais pour les economistes l existence de bons emplois est discutable dans ce texte l auteur propose une definition de bon emploi fondee sur diverses theories du marche du travail un emploi qui engendre un surplus capture en partie par le travailleur il utilise cette definition pour guider son enquete empirique sur l existence et l importance de bons emplois on conclut que les bons emplois existent que le marche du travail ne fonctionne pas seulement selon le modele de roy avec des differentiels de salaires qui refletent seulement les differentiels d habiletes les differentiels compensatoires ou le depot d une caution et que leur impact sur la structure globale des salaires est substantielle finalement l auteur discute les implications de l existence de bons emplois sur la definition de politiques et sur l evaluation du caractere juste d une societe

monopoly resource extractions under the presence of predetermined substitute production abstract decisions concerning the production level of a substitue for a natural resource must often be taken well ahead of the time when the substitute is supplied if the natural resource is owned by a monopolist this may lead to an equilibrium in which the resource extracting firm takes the output path of the substitute as given in this equilibrium the transition from resource extraction to substitute production takes place gradually furthermore the price path of this equilibrium is lower than the price path one finds when the decision period of substitute production is ignored

the transition to modern agriculture contract farming in developing economies recent years have seen considerable interest in the impact of contract farming on farmers in developing countries motivated out of belief that contract farming spurs transition to modern agriculture in this article we provide a thorough review of the empirical literature on contract farming in bo

vertical integration and firm boundaries the evidence since ronald h coase s 1937 seminal paper a rich set of theories has been developed that deal with firm boundaries in vertical or input output structures in the last twenty five years empirical evidence that can shed light on those theories also has been accumulating we review the findings of empirical studies that have addressed two main interrelated questions first what types of transactions are best brought within the firm and second what are the consequences of vertical integration decisions for economic outcomes such as prices quantities investment and profits throughout we highlight areas of potential cross fertilization and promising areas for future work

selecting public goods institutions who likes to punish and reward we study the link between individual attitudes toward uncertainty on the one hand and preferences over as well as behavior within various public goods institutions on the other hand we incentive compatibly elicit preferences over voluntary contribution mechanisms with and without reward and punishment options and then randomly assign subjects to play in one of the four institutions we find that payoffs are significantly greater when punishment is allowed but that only a small minority of participants prefers such an environment somewhat surprisingly preferences over institutions are generally independent of individual characteristics conversely individual characteristics including institutional preferences are significantly predictive of behavior in the public goods game for instance risk averse individuals preemptively punish more often this suggests that when studying sanctions and rewards it is important to consider individual attitudes toward risk and uncertainty although they may not affect the original selection into institutions

strategic considerations in invention and innovation the case of natural resources strategic considerations may induce a resource importing country to invent a substitute earlier than it intends to put it to use there are also circumstances in which it would wish to delay an invention date even if it could obtain it at an earlier date at no extra cost similar paradoxical results obtain if resource cartels behave strategically setting prices high may be a way of deterring invention if those engaged in r d are not resource users and the cartel has access to similar r d technology it will pre empt rivals this may not be the case if resource users can also engage in r d

agency theory and franchising some empirical results this article provides an empirical assessment of various agency theoretic explanations for franchising including risk sharing one sided moral hazard and two sided moral hazard the empirical models use proxies for factors such as risk moral hazard and franchisors need for capital to explain both franchisors decisions about the terms of their contracts royalty rates and up front franchise fees and the extent to which they use franchising in this article i exploit several new sources of data on franchising to construct a cross section of 548 franchisors involved in various business activities in the united states in 1986 the data are most consistent with a model based on two sided moral hazard the empirical models are also more successful at explaining the extent to which franchisors choose to franchise stores than at explaining the terms of franchise contracts finally contrary to the predictions of several theoretical models i find that royalty rates and franchise fees are not negatively related

market structure and resource extraction under uncertainty this paper compares the rate of extraction of a natural resource under alternative market structures when there is uncertainty about the date of discovery of a substitute or about the date of discovery of a new deposit the analysis shows that imperfectly competitive market structures are excessively conservationist for any value of the initial stock of the natural resource the price is higher than in competitive equilibrium and therefore higher than the socially optimal level but markets with limited competition may have a higher price than markets with pure monopoly the same monopolist controlling the natural resource and its substitute in particular we find that the highest prices are associated with nash quantity setting duopolists the next highest prices occur in markets in which the monopolist controls the resource but the substitute is competitively produced the pure monopolist sets his price lower than this while the market in which a monopolist controls the substitute but the resource is competitvely owned is still lower

entrepreneurial orientation risk and incentives the case of franchising the standard principal agent model predicts a trade off in contract design between the protection against risk and incentive motivations distinguishing two types of risks we show that contrary to this traditional view the relationship between risk and incentives can be positive in franchise contracting this implies that the royalty rate decreases with the risk faced by the franchisee on the local market using a unique panel dataset combining french franchise and financial data we address this issue empirically alongside performance outcomes the data support the hypothesis of a negative relationship between risk and the royalty rate which contradicts the prediction of the standard agency theory furthermore our estimations provide evidence that chain performance increases with an adjusted royalty rate this paper has important implications for contract design showing that with increasing local market uncertainty and low risk aversion franchisors should reduce the royalty rate

profit sharing unemployment and effort abstract efficiency wages above market clearing arising from unobservable individual effort are not compatible with profit sharing based on collective output if profit sharing is a feasible contract then full employment is the unique nash equilibrium of the economy

evidence on performance pay and risk aversion abstract making use of a unique representative data set we find clear evidence that risk aversion has a highly significant and substantial negative impact on the probability that an employee s pay is performance contingent which confirms the well known risk incentive trade off

transaction costs and the design of cropshare contracts modern cropshare contracts are explained using a model in which agents are risk neutral and contract rules are chosen to maximize expected joint wealth it is shown that the farmer either bears the entire cost of inputs or shares the costs with the landowner in the same proportion as the output the incentives of altering the cropshare percentage are examined and are used to derive implications about the portion of the crop that will be owned by the farmer the model is tested and supported using data from a 1986 survey offarmers and landowners in nebraska and south dakota

oligopsony power asset specificity and hold up evidence from the broiler industry in this article we look for empirical evidence of hold up in broiler industry production contracts by using the cross sectional national survey of broiler growers first we focus on the problem of under investment and hypothesize that the degree of agent s grower s under investment systematically depends on the principal s integrator s market power and the level of asset specificity second we provide an indirect test of hold up by looking at the grower contract payoffs as a function of the frequency of the housing facilities upgrade requests and the principal s market power the results show moderate empirical support for the presence of hold up

stabilization with wage indexation and exchange rate flexibility abstract this survey examines the role of wage indexation and exchange rate policy in dampening fluctuations in output around its target level it is demonstrated that the appropriate choice for wage indexation and exchange rate flexibility is highly sensitive to the nature and the relative importance of the shocks impinging upon the economy as well as to the relevant parameters in the economy moreover the question of the desired flexibility of the exchange rate should be studied in the context of wage indexation and vice versa this interdependence raises the possibility of both policies being complements or substitutes to each other depending on the number of shocks that perturb the economy

is work special justice and the distribution of employment i investigate from an egalitarian welfarist standpoint the issue of whether state guaranteed employment should be offered as a matter of right to able bodied poor citizens who suffer chronic or persistent unemployment an affirmative answer is defended one consideration supporting this right to work is that provision of transfer aid in the form of jobs rather than cash screens nonneedy bohemians from the class of beneficiaries the main conclusion of the essay is defended from one objection based on efficiency wage models of the labor market and from another based on the alleged impossibility of maintaining the self respect and self esteem of able bodied individuals who fail to earn their own keep independently in a market economy

role of risk sharing and transaction costs in contract choice theory and evidence from groundwater contracts empirical modeling of contract choice has been problematic because routine large scale surveys do not contain sufficient information on matched partners and on contractual terms this paper is based on a primary level survey of groundwater contracts in india we discuss several different measures for riskiness and transaction costs and use them to test for alternative theories of contract choice although the risk sharing explanation has been most popular in the theoretical literature it is not found to be significant the data are more consistent with a double sided incentive model where the need for giving proper incentives to the buyer and the seller determines contract choice

job security provisions and employment european countries have enacted various job security provisions over the last 30 years employers are required to pay workers on separation or to give advance notice of termination in anything less than a perfectly functioning market there are effects of the provisions on employment incumbents are more likely to retain their jobs but new workers are less likely to be hired an examination of the european data suggests that severance pay requirements reduce employment

effects of technology on incentive design of share contracts do observed contracts have the properties predicted by the principal agent model with moral hazard in contract theory this paper tests the predictions of such an agency model in the context of sharecropping in north india the most well known explanation for sharecropping is based on the principal agent model with a trade off between risk and incentives even though sharecropping contracts are quite prevalent in rural areas of developing countries there is very little evidence on factors determining the instruments used to provide incentives in such contracts using information in the data giving rise to exogenous variation in technology across regions this paper tests for the effect of cultivation technology on the incentive structure of share contracts as predicted by the agency model existing empirical evidence on sharecropping seems to indicate that yield on sharecropped plots is lower than on owner operated plots i e there is an incentive problem or moral hazard radwan a shaban 1987 jean jacques laffont and mohamed s matoussi 1995 there is some informal evidence that landowners use various mechanisms to improve efficiency in sharecropping by participating in cost sharing and by repeating contracts robert m townsend and rolf a mueller 1994 examine the nature of these mechanisms in detail but their data do not permit econometric tests more generally though the principal agent model has been widely studied there is little existing empirical evidence for it michael c jensen and kevin j murphy 1990 find that executive compensation is only weakly sensitive to firm performance in recent work rajesh k aggarwal and andrew a samwick 1999 find that executive s pay performance sensitivity is decreasing in the volatility of firm s performance however their results are sensitive to the inclusion of other characteristics of the firms in the regressions as pierre a chiappori and bernard salanie 2003 note in a recent survey empirical work on contract theory using nonexperimental data needs to be careful in adequately correcting for underlying heterogeneity across agents otherwise the parameters of interest would be hard to interpret if such heterogeneity affects contract choice for example douglas w allen and dean lueck 1995 find no role for risk in the choice between share contract and fixed rent contracts but they do not take the heterogeneity across agents into account in a recent paper addressing the issue of heterogeneity across agents ackerberg and botticini 2002 find a significant role for risk in the choice between share contract and fixed rent contract after correcting for endogenous matching between landowners and tenants they find that wealthier tenants are more likely to be in fixed rent contracts in this paper we are able to address such estimation issues and check for the robustness of our results regarding the relationship between technology and the design of share contracts department of economics pennsylvania state university university park pa 16801 e mail pxp22 psu edu this paper derives from related work done earlier in my dissertation i am grateful to two anonymous referees for very helpful suggestions i thank james heckman lars stole robert townsend kala krishna and seminar participants for useful comments financial support from the andrew mellon foundation for both rounds of fieldwork is gratefully acknowledged any errors remain my own 1 see nirvikar singh 1991 for a survey of various theories of sharecropping including steven n cheung 1969 c h hanumantha rao 1971 joseph e stiglitz 1974 david newbery and stiglitz 1979 avishay braverman and stiglitz 1982 mukesh eswaran and ashok kotwal 1985 and sudhir shetty 1988 a common feature of the different theories is an emphasis on uncertainty and asymmetric information 2 an exception is daniel a ackerberg and maristella botticini 2002 ackerberg and botticini differ from our paper in that they examine the role of tenant s risk aversion in the choice between fixed rental contract and share contract they do not examine share contracts per se 3 see john e core and wayne guay 2000

economics of agricultural supply chain design a portfolio selection approach agrifood firms in a globalizing and competitive market both in developing and developed countries often undertake innovations in products and technologies innovators such as firms and other agents develop supply chains to accommodate the nature of the innovations in this article we analyze an innovator s supply chain design problem the design of the supply chain involves three sets of decisions the first is how much to produce the second involves how to undertake production and how many resources to allocate to the production of feedstock agricultural products that are inputs for processing processing and marketing the third set involves deciding on the amount of feedstock to be obtained through contracts with farmers we show that the innovator determines its overall level of production by taking advantage of its monopoly power derived from the innovation in the output market and behaves as a monopsony in buying feedstock from contractors these decisions are constrained by the marginal cost of capital and the properties of production and marketing technologies when the innovator is risk averse risks in farm production processing and marketing will affect both processed output and the share of feedstock bought through contracts

the optimal mix of wage indexation and foreign exchange market intervention this paper develops a model in which wage indexation and foreign exchange market intervention can be used simultaneously for policy purposes with the type of wage indexation used there is shown to be a clear separation of function between the two instruments intervention should be used only to offset demand side disturbances while indexation should depend upon both demand and supply disturbances copyright 1988 by ohio state university press

an econometric model of farm tenures in fifteenth century florence we estimate a discrete choice model of farm tenures in fifteenth century florence using data in the form of an unbalanced panel with individual farms nested within landlords total property holdings the probabilities of wage rental and sharecropping tenures are estimated allowing for landlord specific random effects specification tests are used to validate the model our results emphasize the role of long lived fixed assets vines vulnerable to damage by short term over production as a factor favouring sharecropping which taxes over production however we find evidence against theories emphasizing high monitoring costs as an influence favouring rental contracts

monopolistic resource extraction and limit pricing the market penetration of competitively produced synfuels this paper analyzes the market penetration of a competitively produced synfuel e g solar energy in a market that is initially dominated by a resource extracting monopoly the availability of the renewable substitute depends not only on the price cost ratio but also on the installed capacities which reflect historical investments as a consequence the resource monopoly faces a discontinuous residual demand schedule the dynamic interactions between the resource cartel and the synfuel industry are modelled as a differential game the open loop nash equilibrium is applied to this game it will be shown that the commodity price will exceed the production costs of the backstop and that the transition from the periods of resource dependence to the backstop technology will be gradual

risk coping land tenure and land markets an overview of the literature over the last decades a significant amount of literature has been published on informal risk coping in developing countries in this paper we review how informal risk coping has been addressed in the land tenure literature from two main perspectives a first stream of research looks at how customary tenure and communal property perform key informal risk coping functions a second subset of this literature analyses how informal risk coping creates land market imperfections through sharecropping or distress sales the segmentation of the literature results from the demsetzian property rights framework further research on risk coping and land tenure would benefit from examining recent work on property regimes

learning by doing and the costs of a backstop for energy transition and sustainability we assess the impact of being able to substitute an unlimited but costly energy substitute like wind solar for a non renewable resource like oil coal in a model of sustainable growth the prospects for sustainability on the optimal path depend crucially on the costs of this substitute furthermore the poorer a country measured in terms of capital stock at a given point in time the later it should switch to the renewable substitute and the more likely it will be unsustainable taking learning by doing in account we find that this leads to an earlier switching time but does not guarantee sustainability

producer protection legislation and termination damages in the presence of contracting frictions this study models producer protection legislation ppl that would grant growers the right to claim damages if their contracts are prematurely terminated in the absence of contracting frictions that prevent contractors from redesigning contracts to accommodate exogenous policy changes producer protection legislation damages ppld would not be distortionary or redistributive if contracting frictions exist then ppld would have efficiency and redistributive effects though the direction and magnitude depends on the size of ppl damages vis a vis expected damages under existing contract law this study clarifies the conditions under which ppld would decrease efficiency and protect growers

transaction costs risk aversion and the choice of contractual arrangements publisher summary this chapter discusses transaction costs risk aversion and the choice of contractual arrangements every transaction involves a contract and the transactions conducted in the marketplace entail outright or partial transfers of property rights among individual contracting parties the contractual arrangements through which these transfers are negotiated are several and varied the chapter presents a theory that states that economic efficiency is the same under various land tenure arrangements subject to the constraint of private property rights although transaction costs exist in the real world the theory enables the understanding of much of the farming behavior however the presence of a variety of contractual arrangements under the same constraint of competition poses the question of the choice of these arrangements if a firm can increase efficiency in production by employing productive resources of more than one resource owner a contract to combine the resources will be obtained the formation of the contract involves partial transfers of property rights in one form or another such as leasing hiring or mortgaging

overconfidence and excess entry an experimental approach psychological studies show that most people are overconfident about their own relative abilities and unreasonably optimistic about their futures e g shelly e taylor and j d brown 1988 neil d weinstein 1980 when assessing their position in a distribution of peers on almost any positive trait like driving ability ola svenson 1981 income prospects or longevity a vast majority of people say they are above the average although of course only half can be if the trait is symmetrically distributed this paper explores whether optimistic biases could plausibly and predictably influence economic behavior in one particular setting entry into competitive games or markets many empirical studies show that most new businesses fail within a few years for example using plant level data from the u s census of manufacturers spanning 1963 1982 timothy dunne et al 1988 estimated that 61 5 percent of all entrants exited within five years and 79 6 percent exited within 10 years most of these exits are failures see also dunne et al 1989a 1989b d shapiro and r s khemani 1987

are workers willing to pay to join a better team using data from the major league baseball free agent market this study is the first to show that the productivity expected of the team a worker will join produces a significant negative compensating wage differential the younger workers in the sample drive this result trading 25 of their wages to join teams with an expected productivity one standard deviation higher this investment can be recouped if a reasonable increase in human capital occurs these results are robust to contract length wage simultaneity and indicate that investment in human capital motivates the observed tradeoff suggesting a new pathway through which human capital accumulation can affect wages reliable measures of workers own past productivity and the productivity expected of a worker s future team provide key advantages to identifying these effects jel j31 j24 m54

efficient moral hazard abstract this paper presents an infinite horizon discounted dynamic programming model of the endogenous opportunity costs of an agent s effort that is allocated among an endogenous number of principals an agent allocates effort between evaluating new principals and attending to current principals since each principal s return is not maximized by the agent s optimal allocation moral hazard occurs in equilibrium however since the agent maximizes the total expected value of all undertaken projects the agent s allocation of effort is efficient if the agent chooses a single principal then moral hazard does not occur and the allocation is efficient these results are contrary to the inefficient moral hazard results in bilateral principal agent p a and common agency c a models

the role of risk and risk aversion in adoption of alternative marketing arrangements by the u s farmers the objective of this article is to analyse the relationship between farmers risk aversions and the riskiness of various agricultural enterprises to see which marketing arrangements would typically emerge relying on the basic agency theory model we hypothesize the prevalence of alternative marketing arrangements amas in situations with high risk averse farmers and high risk enterprises and the prevalence of spot cash markets for low risk averse participants and less risky enterprises our empirical tests are carried out using the 2004 agricultural resource management survey arms the empirical results are largely supportive of the agency theory of contract choice

contractual design with correlated information under limited liability we examine contractual design in a principal agent model under two forms of limited liability nonnegative constraints on the transfer payments to and the profits of the agent we show that when limited liability is a binding constraint the principal cannot implement the first best solution and the agent earns rents from private information limited liability is a binding constraint in the nonnegative transfers model only when a signal is insufficiently responsible to type inelastic further as the production rule and profits are continuous in the type elasticity of the signal density function the level of the inefficiency is less than that which obtains with no signal if a signal is sufficiently responsive to type elastic in this environment then the principal can implement the first best allocation and the value of the agent s private information is zero we show that limited liability will always be a binding constraint in the nonnegative ex post profits model regardless of the information content of the signal the production rule and welfare are increasing in the informativeness of the signal

risk preferences and the economics of contracts t he literature of risk aversion and risk preference is one of the richest sources of ad hoc assumptions concerning tastes n o significant behavior has been illuminated by assumptions of differences in tastes such theories have been a convenient crutch to lean on when the analysis has bogged down they give the appearance of considered judgement yet really have only been ad hoc arguments that disguise analytical failures george j stigler and gary s becker 1977 p 89

the international transmission of economic shocks in a three country world under mixed exchange rates the international transmission of economic disturbances is analysed in a three country world where two countries have no macroeconomic impact on a third country but are large enough to influence each other under a system of mixed exchange rates a system that combines the fixed exchange rates fers among two ec member countries germany and france and the flexible exchange rates flers towards a third country the rest of the world usa we find that a positive output demand shock originating in germany or france has a positive effect on domestic output but due to a special third country effect is likely to produce a contractionary impact on foreign output negative transmission while the total effect on the world economy is expansionary money supply shocks in either germany or france have identical effects on the output of the two countries the fler component of the mer regime serves as an important tool for dampening the impact of us shocks on the output of the ec

uncertainty entrepreneurship and sharecropping in india this study attempts to explain the coexistence of different farm lease arrangements in terms of the varying significance of entrepreneurial functions in india crop sharing arrangements are common in areas of relative economic certainty with very little scope for decision making for example for product and factor substitution and where the entrepreneurial profit is low fixed cash rents are common in situations of high uncertainty where the scope for decision making is significant or where the crops are highly profitable efficiency considerations predominate in areas of sharecropping favoring a smaller farm size whereas under high uncertainty large size is favored for reducing risk

equilibrium transitions from non renewable energy to renewable energy under capacity constraints abstract we study the transition between non renewable and renewable energy sources with adjustment costs over the production capacity of renewable energy assuming constant variable marginal costs for both energy sources convex adjustment costs and a more expensive renewable energy we show the following with sufficiently abundant non renewable energy endowments the dynamic equilibrium path is composed of a first time phase of only non renewable energy use followed by a transition phase substituting progressively renewable energy to non renewable energy before a last time phase of only renewable energy use the investment into renewable energy may either begin before actual production of renewable energy or be delayed until the energy price achieves a sufficient gap with respect to the renewable energy cost with an initially abundant non renewable resource the features of the transition between non renewable and renewable energy do not depend upon the initial resource stock

the risk preferences of u s executives in this paper i elicit risk attitudes of u s executives by calibrating a subjective option valuation model for option exercising data 1996 to 2008 yielding approximately 65 000 values of relative risk aversion rra for almost 7 000 executives the observed behavior is generally consistent with moderate risk aversion and a median mean rra close to one three values are validated for chief executive officers ceos by testing theory based predictions on the influence of individual characteristics on risk preferences such as gender marital status religiosity and intelligence senior managers such as ceos presidents and chairpersons of the boards of directors are significantly less risk averse than non senior executives rra heterogeneity is strongly correlated with sector membership and firm level variables such as size performance and capital structure alternative factors influencing option exercises are tested for their influence on rra values this paper was accepted by brad barber finance

profit sharing risk sharing and firm size implications of efficiency wages by taking account of output fluctuations this paper constructs a synthesis of profit sharing and efficiency wage models to highlight the role of the risk attitudes of the firm and its employees we show contrary to the traditional efficiency wage theory that in a profit sharing economy unemployment is no longer a necessary device to induce work effort and consequently the labor market equilibrium may be characterized by full employment such a result is more likely to be true when the economy is characterized by small sized firms in addition we also provide a preliminary sketch of the situations in which the firm chooses a profit sharing program or a fixed wage one and discuss how a firm determines its pay parameters and employment in response to output fluctuations

resource extraction of imperfect substitutes abstract the recent literature about exhaustible resource extraction emphasized the analysis of perfect substitutes backstop but overlooked the important case of imperfect substitutes this paper introduces imperfect substitutes and investigates whether properties which are robust in one commodity case carry over to the case of limited substitution in particular the proposition of strict sequential exploitation of reservoirs of a certain resource from the cheapest to the more costly grades and the validity of declining extraction are investigated for the more general case of imperfect substitutes it will be shown that these properties are not robust against variations in the assumption of the degree of competition of the resource types contained in the difference pools