In this paper we estimate the price and income elasticities for five sweet spreads using a two-stage budgeting procedure. The first stage modeled the consumer's budget decision as a Tobit model, where total sweet spread expenditures are based on income and demographic variables. The second stage, including only those households with nonzero first stage expenditures, was treated as a standard consumer allocation problem using the AIDS model. To incorporate population demographics, the AIDS model was expanded by specifying the constant term as a linear function of demographic variables. The coefficients for the prices and expenditures are highly significant and demand is elastic for all five goods. The most significant demographic effects are due to household size, and female food shopper. The theoretical restrictions of homogeneity and symmetry were tested and rejected for the complete system.

Insurance rates for crop yield protection programs have traditionally been calculated from county average yields. Where grower acreages and yields are not homogeneous, this approach leads to higher premiums and payouts and greater incidence of adverse selection. With individual grower data a production weighted rate premium calculation method can be used which avoids these problems. Furthermore, the definition of rate classes is not constrained to county boundaries. The additional complication of technical change is addressed and one solution is provided. Results are presented for the cranberry industry.

This paper explores how hedonic price analysis might be used to estimate the surplus benefits of local outdoor recreation when distance to the recreational site is captured in property values. The model is characterized by the endogenous choice of distance to a local recreational area by households in coastal property markets and by the capitalization of proximity in property values. Equilibrium occurs when the reduction in the cost of a property due to a marginal increase in distance to the recreational area equals the associated loss in recreational surplus resulting from increased travel costs. The theoretical model is applied in an exploratory analysis of the “demand” for distance to the nearest public beach from which total surplus benefits are estimated.

As we enter a new decade, it seems logical to take stock of the state of our profession and to attempt to assess where we may be heading and what we may be doing in the years ahead. It may be less logical or enlightening to ask a research administrator to make this assessment. Furthermore, I believe that researchers themselves should be identifying the problems and mapping out the new directions. However, there will be certain institutional constraints that will play a significant role in your ability to carry out our research mission; and it is to these constraints that I wish to speak first.

Congress consented to the creation of the Northeast Interstate Dairy Compact in the 1996 Federal Agriculture Improvement and Reform Act. Interest is now growing in expanding this compact and creating new multi-regional dairy compacts. Dairy compacts provide a floor for Class I fluid prices and thus stabilize and enhance farm milk prices in compact regions. This analysis indicates that multi-regional dairy compacts will result in clear economic tradeoffs between dairy farmers, processors, retailers, and consumers. While dairy farmers within the compact region may economically benefit from higher farm milk prices, processors, retailers and consumers in the compact region and dairy farmers outside the compact region will face economic losses.

Preliminary forecasts using the Box-Jenkins methodology for supermarket scan data for ground beef and roast item movement are described. The functional form and the accuracy of the forecasts vary by product. Results suggest that further analyses incorporating price and advertising may increase the accuracy of the forecasts.

In recent years, many researchers have sought to measure the effects of adolescent soft drink consumption due to a suspected link with childhood obesity and other negative health outcomes. While most studies in the existing literature have focused on physical health outcomes, the current study seeks to analyze how providing soft drinks in vending machines affects adolescent in-school behavior and academics. The data for this analysis comes from a school district in which a subset of schools prohibited the sale of soft drinks in vending machines. Using this subset of schools as a treatment group, students at the treatment schools are compared with students at the schools that did not change their vending machine policies. A difference-in-differences estimation shows that the number of times a student was tardy to class decreased significantly at the treatment schools. Students also were less likely to be referred to the principal's office for behavior problems following the policy change. These results suggest that policies directed toward restrictions on soft drinks in school vending machines might improve behavioral outcomes for students.

The Conservation Compliance provision of the Food Security Act of 1985 requires all farmers who farmed highly erodible land prior to the passage of the Act to have a locally approved conservation plan fully implemented by 1995 or lose eligibility for numerous farm programs. Soil loss estimates of various crop, tillage practices, and conservation practices, however, are stochastic in nature. A farm planning model is suggested that allows for stochastic soil loss estimates. The model is compared to other models used in farm level soil conservation studies. The model shows promise as a more acceptable tool in that the farm plans are more likely to be acceptable to the farmer.

Purchasable development rights (PDR) programs are generally considered to provide permanent protection of farmland because development rights are separated from the land in perpetuity. However, the programs do not require that farming activities be maintained in the future. Farming may be discontinued on PDR parcels due to changes in economic conditions or if the parcels are converted to non-farm, rural estates. Such changes may reduce the flow of public goods that citizens seek to obtain by implementing PDR programs. We examine changes in land use on PDR parcels to determine if current activities are consistent with program goals. While changes have occurred in the crops and livestock produced on Rhode Island farms, over time, all of the farms on which development rights were purchased during 1985 through 1999 are currently being farmed by the original owners or by new operators who have either purchased or leased the land.

A two-equation random coefficients model and two estimates of milk prices in the absence of the Northeast Interstate Dairy Compact (Compact) are used to estimate the impact of minimum price regulation for fluid milk products on milk production in the New England states. Estimated responses to price enhancement differed by state for cow numbers, but parameters for milk per cow were not significantly different among states. The amount of increase in milk production attributed to the Compact is estimated at 45 million pounds (about 1% of production) during the first year of minimum price regulation, primarily due to increased milk per cow.

Many conservation programs under the 2002 Farm Act address resource concerns such as water quality and aquatic communities in streams. Analyzing two such programs, simulated changes in agricultural practices decreased field-edge sediment losses by 25–31% in two geophysically distinct Minnesota watersheds. However, while in-stream sediment concentrations and lethal fisheries events decreased significantly in one watershed, there was no discernable improvement for the fisheries in the other, despite potentially spending over $100,000 annually in conservation payments. These results highlight the importance of performance-based conservation payments targeted to genuine resource concerns in watersheds and the value of integrated bioeconomic modeling of conservation programs.

An OLG model with exhaustible resources and solar energy is developed, and equilibrium time paths are characterized numerically using recursive methods. For the parameter values considered, resource prices increase over time, and extractions, output, and utility decline over time until a steady-state is reached. Decreasing the intertemporal elasticity of substitution or raising consumers' subjective discount rate hastens exhaustion of the resource stock. Market equilibrium can result in much quicker use of the stock than social optimality under a constant discount rate, with consequent higher utility for early generations and lower utility for future generations in contrast to social optimality.

Cattle feed yards routinely track and collect data for individual calves throughout the feeding period. Using such operational data from nine U.S. feed yards for the years 2016–2019, we evaluated the scalability and economic viability of using machine learning classifier predicted mortality as a culling decision aid. The expected change in net return per head when using the classifier predictions as a culling aid as compared to the status quo culling protocol for calves having been pulled at least once for bovine respiratory disease was simulated. This simulated change in net return ranged from −$1.61 to $19.46/head. Average change in net return and standard deviation for the nine feed yards in this study was $6.31/head and $7.75/head, respectively.

We investigate incumbent brands’ response to entry and increased competition in a large retail setting. We extend the nonprice competition and manufacturer stocking literatures by examining if incumbent brands increase quality, specifically increasing the number of varieties (product-line length), in response to entry of a new local brand in the ice cream market. We use the entry of a new, local, super-premium ice cream brand in a large supermarket chain as a quasi-natural experiment and empirically examine if incumbent ice cream brands increased the product-line length in stores carrying the new brand. Using Poisson difference-in-differences estimators, we find that incumbent brands increased the number of varieties offered by 0.9 (3 percent) after the new brand's entry, with most of the responses coming from super-premium ice cream, which increased the number of varieties offered by 2.9 (12 percent) product choices. These findings contribute new insights into quality changes, manufacturer stocking decisions, and nonprice competition associated with entry of a local brand into the food retail sector.

Cost-share contracts, offered through working lands programs, are instrumental in addressing environmental externalities from agriculture and generating ecosystem services. However, the persistent trend of noncompliance with cost-share contractual terms has become a problem for funding agencies and policymakers. This paper aims to study noncompliance issues within the US working lands programs using historical county-level panel data (1997–2019) from Louisiana. The results show that noncompliance is attributed more to cancellations than terminations due to flexible provisions within the cancellation option. The significant incentive effect of payment obligations reveals that revisiting payment rates could reduce contract noncompliance and mitigate moral hazard.

Opaluch and Just reported the top 20 departments in pages per faculty of articles in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics for the five year period 1968–1972. To determine how much has changed and how much has not during the intervening two decades, the analysis was repeated for the five year period 1988–1992. Some things seem not to change. University of California, Berkeley, remains at the pinnacle twenty years later. And 13 of the top 20 departments two decades ago, remain there during the 1988–1992 period. But seven did change, and the most notable aspect is that the number of Northeast departments in the top 20 rose from two to five.

With the rapid increase in consumption of some livestock products in Indonesia, expansion of domestic production of these commodities may enhance smallholders' incomes, increase rural employment and add to the country's trade balance. Policy analysis matrices (PAMs) were constructed to estimate divergences between private and social costs and returns in poultry and pig production in selected regions of Indonesia. In each case, producers' use of capital was subsidised but feed input private costs exceeded social values, and output prices received by producers fell short of values based on world prices. Production of all products as import substitutes was socially profitable, but in many instances private returns to farmers were negative. Product price and feed cost divergences were the major policy-induced distortions. Reform of these policies was estimated in a static partial equilibrium framework to lead to supply expansions of each livestock product, a contraction in livestock product consumption, and therefore additional net foreign exchange earnings from the poultry and pig sectors of around $320 million.

Using the case of Canadian dairy industry, this paper investigates the farm level effectiveness of generic advertising in two vertically related markets under government regulation and oligopolistic power. Comparative static analysis indicates that an increase in advertising may either increase or decrease the farm level profit when the processing industry is oligopolistic. When advertising leads to an increase in the farm level profit under the oligopolistic processing industry, the size of this effect may be more than, less than, or the same as that under perfect competition. Specifications of the retail demand function play an important role in determining both the direction and magnitude of the effect of advertising on the farm level profit under the oligopolistic processing industry. The simulation results of the Canadian butter industry illustrate that the magnitude of the bias caused by an erroneous assumption regarding the market structure could be significant.

In October 1976, President Ford signed into law PL 94–566 (the “Unemployment Compensation Amendments of 1976,” henceforth the law), which among other items extends unemployment insurance (UI) coverage to agricultural workers in establishments employing 10 or more workers for 20 weeks or more or with a high quarter payroll of at least $20,000, (henceforth the ‘10 in 20 or $20,000’ provision).