bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Before‐ and After‐Tax Size Economies: An Example for Cash Grain Production in Illinois
Authors: Batte Marvin T. , Sonka Steven T. 
Published: July 2006

AbstractThis article reports the degree to which economies of farm size exist for commercial Illinois cash grain agriculture, both on a before‐ and after‐tax basis. Receipt, expense, and investment data are from the Illinois Farm Business Farm Management Association records, 1975–79. Analysis of covariance techniques were used in the examination of the five‐year time series of cross‐sectional data. Results indicate statistically significant evidence of economies of size, both on a before‐ and after‐tax basis. There was no significant evidence of diseconomies of size for this sample.
Optimal Grain Carryovers in Open Economies: A Graphical Analysis
Authors: Knapp Keith C. 
Published: July 2006

AbstractOptimal storage, trade, and borrowing policies for grain are analyzed graphically using dynamic programming. World prices and domestic harvests are assumed to be stochastic. Optimal carryovers are generally increasing in supply and decreasing in world prices, while net imports are decreasing in both supply and world prices. Optimal levels of carryovers and net imports are influenced by the opportunity to borrow and save foreign exchange. It is shown that grain reserves and foreign exchange borrowing/saving are alternative inventory systems which both complement and substitute for one another.
Some Emerging Rights in Agricultural Land
Authors: Braden John B. 
Published: July 2006

AbstractAgricultural land use rights have become increasingly complex fol1owing new policies for soil conservation, nonpoint pol1ution control, wetlands protection, and farmland preservation. When viewed in a framework that distinguishes between ownership and exchange of rights, little change is evident in ownership of rights. The added complexity has come mainly in the rules governing exchanges. Farmers are confronted increasingly with rules which allow specific rights to be limited by government with compensation. These rules retain the flexibility of individual ownership while reflecting a growing awareness that the general welfare depends on wise use of agricultural land.
Disequilibrium Market Analysis: An Application to the U.S. Fed Beef Sector
Authors: Ziemer Rod F. , White Fred C. 
Published: July 2006

AbstractIn this paper current theory and estimation procedures are applied in an analysis of disequilibrium price behavior in the U.S. fed beef sector. Although tests of equilibrium versus disequilibrium hypotheses are not well developed, results indicate the possible presence of disequilibrium prices in the market for fed beef; at least the hypothesis of significant disequilibrium could not be rejected.
Recreational Demands for Maintaining Instream Flows: A Contingent Valuation Approach
Authors: Daubert John T. , Young Robert A. 
Published: July 2006

AbstractRecreational uses of streams, although nonconsumptive, increasingly conflict with traditional off‐stream uses of water in arid regions. Recreational demands for instream flows have collective good attributes such that the recreationists' preferences may be inadequately reflected in water allocation decisions. The contingent valuation approach was adapted to impute instream flow shadow prices from a sample of recreationists on the Cache la Poudre River in northern Colorado. During periods of relatively low flows, the estimated instream flow marginal value exceeds the marginal value of water in irrigation, suggesting a need for altered water allocation policies.
Hedging with Options under Variance Uncertainty: An Illustration of Pricing New‐Crop Soybeans
Authors: Hauser Robert J. , Andersen Dane K. 
Published: July 2006

AbstractThe behavior of a commodity's price‐return variance over time is critical to both the theory and practice of commodity option valuation. In this paper three models are used to forecast soybean price variance for the period during which a seasonal increase in variance has been found in previous studies. A time‐series model outperforms the ordinary least squares and naive models. The significance of the forecast error levels is then examined in terms of expected deviations above and below a price target for a put hedge. The resulting trade‐off between risk and return is shown by strike price and variance expectation.
Offshore Commodity Hedging under Floating Exchange Rates
Authors: Thompson Stanley R. , Bond Gary E. 
Published: July 2006

AbstractExchange rate uncertainty can have significant effects on the optimal hedging behavior of offshore commodity traders. In this paper, the standard commodity hedging framework is extended first to incorporate exchange rate uncertainty and second, to forward cover transactions in the foreign exchange market. The implications of exchange rate movements and forward cover decisions for offshore commodity hedgers are illustrated using data relevant to hedging Australian export wheat on the Chicago Board of Trade.
Toward an Appropriate Measure of Uncertainty in a Risk Programming Model
Authors: McSweeny William T. , Kenyon David E. , Kramer Randall A. 
Published: July 2006

AbstractThe measure of uncertainty in a risk‐programming problem has long posed a dilemma. The use of the variance of realized returns assumes that the distribution of realized returns is the same as the distribution anticipated by the decision maker prior to the start of production. Rejection of this maintained hypothesis requires either direct elicitation of these distributions or construction of another measure from realized data. A mean‐squared forecast error is considered an appropriate measure. Optimal solutions to a quadratic risk‐programming problem are obtained using this measure and compared to those obtained using traditional measures.
Returns to Farm Real Estate Revisited
Authors: Irwin Scott H. , Forster D. Lynn , Sherrick Bruce J. 
Published: July 2006

AbstractBarry's research on farm real estate returns suggests that when farm assets are viewed as a part of the nation's wealth portfolio, returns are not persistently low, as is commonly asserted in policy debates. This paper extends Barry's research by explicitly accounting for the effects of uncertain inflation, using a broader market proxy, and lengthening the sample period. The results suggest farm real estate offers only slight (not substantial) premiums above those for systematic risk, contributes little systematic risk to a well‐diversified portfolio, and exhibits substantial risk due to uncertain inflation.
Farmers' Stepwise Adoption of Technological Packages: Evidence from the Mexican Altiplano
Authors: Byerlee Derek , de Polanco Edith Hesse 
Published: July 2006

AbstractAgricultural research and extension programs in developing countries, rather than following the conventional package approach, should be designed to take into account the fact that farmers adopt improved technological components in a stepwise manner. On‐farm experimental and survey data collected from two rainfall zones in a high valley of Mexico are synthesized to show that farmers have rationally followed a stepwise process of adopting improved varieties, fertilizer, and herbicide for barley, reflecting the relative profitability and riskiness of each component in each zone. Despite significant interactions between the components, it was still possible for farmers to adopt individual components in a sequential manner.
Cycles in Agricultural Production: The Case of Aquaculture
Authors: Karp Larry , Sadeh Arye , Griffin Wade L. 
Published: July 2006

AbstractThe problem of determining optimal harvest and restocking time and levels is considered. A continuous time deterministic control problem is used to study the case where production occurs in a controlled environment. A stochastic control problem is then used to determine rules for the cultivation of P. stylirostris which occurs in a stochastic environment. The deterministic analog of the problem is also solved. The two solutions are used to develop a measure for the value of a controlled environment and for the value of information about the stochastic environment.
Theoretical and Empirical Specifications Issues in Travel Cost Demand Studies
Authors: Kealy Mary Jo , Richard C. Bishop 
Published: July 2006

AbstractA travel cost demand model is derived from a utility function which postulates that individuals choose the optimal total number of site recreation days given by the product of the number and length of their recreation trips. By relaxing the assumption that on‐site time is constant across recreationists, the applicability of the travel cost method is extended. The model is estimated using a maximum likelihood procedure appropriate for the truncated sample data which is characteristic of most user‐specific recreation data. Failure to do so would result in overestimating the value of Great Lakes fishing by 3.5 times.
Rollover Hedging and Missing Long‐Term Futures Markets
Authors: Gardner Bruce L. 
Published: July 2006

AbstractSequential rollover of annual futures positions provides farmers or others with a means of long‐term hedging. Consequently, the absence of multiyear futures markets may not be a serious problem. However, year‐to‐year basis risk exists which can render rollovers ineffective in hedging. Evidence on soybean, corn, and cotton futures suggests that rollovers would be effective at locking in an initial price for a three‐ to six‐year period but would be ineffective in routine hedging over a series of successive three‐ to six‐year periods.
Subjective Probabilities and Scoring Rules: Experimental Evidence
Authors: Nelson Robert G. , Bessler David A. 
Published: July 2006

AbstractThis paper provides an articulation of the theory of scoring rules that leads to a testable hypothesis about strategic behavior under an improper rule. Subjects in a laboratory setting were first screened for linear utility in the range of rewards. Those that passed this test were used as subjects in a probability forecasting experiment. Results suggest that theory holds when subjects forecast over many periods, although inexperienced subjects may fail to exploit the dominant strategy in the initial periods.
Risk Aversion versus Expected Profit Maximization with a Progressive Income Tax
Authors: Taylor C. Robert 
Published: July 2006

AbstractThis article introduces the terms “apparent,” or “pseudo,” risk aversion to represent those situations where “real” risk aversion is falsely attributed simply because second and higher moments of random variables are arguments in a decision maker's objective function. Apparent risk aversion can occur when stochastic variables nonlinearly enter the objective function. The progressive income tax structure is highlighted as a neglected but important source of apparent risk aversion. Such sources of apparent risk aversion should be recognized, otherwise an incorrect level of risk aversion might be claimed, or risk aversion might be claimed when risk neutrality prevails.
Surplus Disposal in World Markets: An Application to Egyptian Cotton
Authors: Monke Eric A. , Cory Dennis C. , Heckerman Donald G. 
Published: July 2006

AbstractIn many countries, agricultural exports are managed directly by governments. A frequent problem encountered by policy makers involves the accumulation of unwanted surpluses caused by domestic price support programs, unforeseen declines in world demand, or unexpected shifts in the domestic supply‐demand balance. This paper examines the intertemporal use of the world markets as a means to eliminate these surpluses. The analytical results follow directly from the theory of storage. They are applied to an analysis of the Egyptian ELS cotton market, where stock levels in the early 1980s became about six times as large as normal carryout. Estimation results suggest that optimal disposal plans may frequently involve selling surplus stocks in a single year.
The Demand for Varied Diet with Econometric Models for Count Data
Authors: Lee Jonq‐Ying 
Published: July 2006

AbstractA negative binomial model was used to study the relationships between food expenditures, household characteristics, and the demand for different food items. The results show that increases in food expenditure increase the number of food items consumed at home, and the number of food items consumed at home is positively related to increases in the number of household members. This change in the number of food items consumed at home increases at a decreasing rate as household size increases and becomes negative when household size becomes large.
A Small‐Sample Comparison of Estimators in the EU‐MGF Approach to Decision Making
Authors: Gbur Edward E. , Collins Robert A. 
Published: July 2006

AbstractEstimation of the moment‐generating function lies at the core of the exponential utility—moment‐generating function approach to decision making. The small sample performances of the nonparametric empirical moment‐generating function and a parametric competitor have been examined under a variety of situations defined by the sample size, the level of risk aversion, and the degree to which the assumed parametric model approximates reality. Conditions under which each estimator would be preferred are obtained. Neither approach can be recommended unequivocally in all situations.
Endogenous Local Public Extension Policy
Authors: Huffman Wallace E. , McNulty Mark 
Published: July 2006

AbstractA model of competitive pressure groups is proposed for explaining public provision of agricultural extension services and tested against county data from four midwestern U.S. states. The allocation of extension staff time is explained by variables representing the average wealth position and membership size of farm and nonfarm pressure groups. Also, farmers' schooling is shown to have a large negative relationship to the provision of county agricultural extension services, which suggests that they are substitutes.
Land Allocation under Uncertainty for Alternative Specifications of Return Distributions
Authors: Collender Robert N. , Zilberman David 
Published: July 2006

AbstractUsing the expected utility‐moment‐generating function approach, a land allocation rule is derived which is both independent of the nature of the underlying distribution of each element in the choice set and accounts for all moments of that distribution. This decision rule is applied to the choice between cotton and corn in the Mississippi Delta to demonstrate that consideration of just the first two moments of the distribution can often be unjustified and damaging empirically, theoretically, and in terms of the utility of the decision maker.
Analysis of Selected Marketing Strategies: A Whole‐Farm Simulation Approach
Authors: Bailey DeeVon , Richardson James W. 
Published: July 2006

AbstractA detailed whole‐farm simulation model capable of simulating stochastic daily cash and futures prices was used to evaluate alternative marketing strategies for a Texas High Plains cotton farm over a ten‐year planning horizon. Stochastic dominance with respect to a function was used to rank the alternative marketing strategies for risk‐averse and risk‐neutral producers. Results indicated that risk‐averse producers would prefer hedge and hold marketing strategies over discretionary hedging strategies. Sellers' call contracting was not highly preferred by either risk‐neutral or risk‐averse producers.
Risk Modeling Using Direct Solution of Nonlinear Approximations of the Utility Function
Authors: Lambert David K. , McCarl Bruce A. 
Published: July 2006

AbstractA risk model is developed which involves direct solution of the expected utility maximization problem utilizing nonlinear programming. The model permits the use of utility functions exhibiting increasing, constant, and decreasing absolute risk aversion. Demonstrations are done using functions exhibiting such properties over normal, uniform, and triangular data sets.
Forward Pricing Strategies for the South Central Illinois Corn Producer
Authors: Rich Sharon K. 
Published: July 2006

AbstractPrice volatility and current agricultural economic conditions have induced a need for grain farmers to develop pricing strategies that take advantage of favorable pricing opportunities. This paper identifies eighteen pricing strategies, evaluates them over a four‐year historical optimization period, and compares the average price received to the cash delivery price at harvest. Twelve of the eighteen strategies resulted in an average net price higher than the harvest delivery base. The strategies were then tested with a fifth year of data to evaluate their effectiveness outside the optimization period. Only one of the twelve optimum strategies from the historic period produced a lower net price in the 1984 test period than the harvest delivery price.
Farmers' Choice of Fixed and Adjustable Interest Rate Loans
Authors: Leatham David J. , Baker Timothy G. 
Published: July 2006

AbstractA discrete stochastic programming model of a midwestern crop‐hog farm was used to investigate farmers' fixed‐rate/adjustable‐rate loan decision. Results show it is optimal for farmers to pay up to 1.5 percentage points above adjustable interest rates to use some fixed‐rate debt. Below a one‐point premium all fixed‐rate debt is chosen. Above 1.5 points all adjustable rate debt is chosen except for more risk‐averse farmers, who choose all adjustable rate debt at 2.25 points or more. The feasibility of using financial options to hedge interest rates was investigated and found to be prohibitively expensive.
Welfare Comparisons of U.S. Dairy Policies with and without Mandatory Supply Control
Authors: Kaiser Harry M. , Streeter Deborah H. , Liu Donald J. 
Published: July 2006

AbstractThe existence of costly dairy surpluses has led some policy makers to argue in favor of mandatory supply controls as an alternative to existing dairy policy. A dynamic econometric model is used to simulate the changes in equilibrium prices, quantities, producer and consumer welfare, and government costs that would occur if mandatory controls were adopted. The results show that while such a change in policy would eliminate the costs associated with current price supports, the benefits accruing to producers would be achieved at the expense of consumers and processors.
A Stochastic Dominance Analysis of Tillage and Crop Insurance Practices in a Semiarid Region
Authors: Williams Jeffery R. 
Published: July 2006

AbstractStochastic dominance analysis for tillage systems in the semiarid conditions of the central Great Plains indicates that risk‐averse managers would prefer conservation tillage systems for wheat and grain sorghum with and without the use of crop insurance instead of the traditional conventional dryland wheat‐fallow cropping system. Higher yields in conjunction with reduced fuel, labor, and repair costs more than offset increased chemical costs of the conservation systems. Increased yields generally are attributed to the soil moisture conservation characteristic of the conservation tillage systems.
Stochastic Modeling of Short‐Term Cattle Operations
Authors: Rodriguez Abelardo , Taylor R. G. 
Published: July 2006

AbstractA risk‐neutral stochastic dynamic programming model was used to test the certainty equivalence (CE) property in sequential decisions over a single season in a northeastern Colorado yearling operation. Stochastic rainfall represented risk in forage production, and stochastic steer prices represented marketing risk. Certainty equivalence held when cattle prices were stochastic and risk was increased as cattle sales were postponed. Intensive forage utilization as the grazing season progressed caused CE rejection at high stocking densities. High stocking densities with flexible marketing strategies had larger expected net present values than low stocking densities with fixed marketing strategies.
Separability Testing in Production Economics
Authors: Pope Rulon D. , Hallam Arne 
Published: July 2006

AbstractThe implications of separability in production are examined using duality. Restrictions on the profit function implied by separability of the production function, and vice versa, are derived in a simple way. These restrictions are then calculated for commonly used classes of functional forms. Then the method is used to test separability of the profit function using experimental production data. The hypothesis that the profit function was separable (plant nutrients from spacing unit costs) could not be rejected. This implies that an aggregate price index for nutrients is appropriate.
Short‐Term Leasing, Resource Allocation, and Crop‐Share Tenancy
Authors: Taslim M. A. 
Published: July 2006

AbstractThis paper develops a model of crop‐share tenancy to demonstrate that a policy of short‐term leasing which enables the landlord to evict a tenant whose performance is not satisfactory may ensure a desired intensity of cultivation of crop‐share land even when the tenant is free to choose the amounts of both crop‐share land and nonland inputs.
Food Processor Price Behavior: Firm‐Level Evidence of Sticky Prices
Authors: Shonkwiler J. S. , Taylor T. G. 
Published: July 2006

AbstractFirms in imperfectly competitive markets face direct and indirect costs when changing product prices. The latter costs reflect uncertain changes in revenue and market share resulting from the actions of rival firms. Rosett's friction model is applied to firm‐level data to provide estimates of the indirect costs of changing prices for a major processor of frozen concentrated orange juice. Results indicate that indirect costs cause significant price rigidity. Additionally the hypothesis that prices are equally rigid for upward and downward changes could not be rejected.
A Model of Production with Supply Management for the Canadian Agricultural Sector
Authors: Moschini Giancarlo 
Published: July 2006

AbstractThe production structure of the Canadian agricultural sector is modeled by an output‐constrained multiproduct profit function to account for the existence of supply management policies. The le Chatelier effects of supply constraints are illustrated, and the comparative statics of supply management is shown to depend, under input normality, on the type of jointness. Convexity is tested and accepted, and nonjointness is rejected by the estimated normalized quadratic profit function. The results support the hypothesis of nonjointness due to allocatable fixed factors. Decreasing the supply of managed commodities will increase the supply of unrestricted commodities, while total input use is reduced.
The Effects of Tax Policy on Aggregate Agricultural Investment
Authors: LeBlanc Michael , Hrubovcak James 
Published: July 2006

AbstractThe effects of tax policies on aggregate agricultural investment are examined. Results from this analysis suggest that tax policies are effective in promoting agricultural investment. Nearly 20 percent of net investment in agricultural equipment during the period 1956 through 1978 is attributed to tax policy. From 1956 to 1978, tax policy has stimulated, in real dollars, over $@@‐@@5 billion in net investment in equipment and in excess of $@@‐@@1 billion in structures.
Farm Debt, Default, and Foreclosure: An Economic Rationale for Policy Action
Authors: Leathers Howard D. , Chavas Jean‐Paul 
Published: July 2006

AbstractEconomic analysis of farm programs typically focusses on economic costs. Here we show that, because of market failures and imperfections, there are possible economic benefits to be derived from programs which reduce or eliminate the threat of default and foreclosure. A production model of an indebted firm is developed and serves as a basis for an aggregate model which identifies possible costs and benefits from a program of transfers to indebted farmers. The challenge facing policy makers is to design programs which capture the benefits of reducing the probability of default while minimizing perverse incentive effects of such programs.