While access to reliable electricity can significantly constrain industrial production, little is known as to how unreliability impacts firm level productivity. This is a particularly salient issue for firms in developing countries, where electricity provision is still unreliable and self-generation is costly. This paper analyzes the impact of electricity provision on productivity, instrumenting for electricity demand with district level solar irradiance. Results indicate that firms exhibit decreasing productivity in the initial stages of electricity adoption that decreases over time. Furthermore, I find that unreliability negatively impacts productivity initially and over time, and this effect is larger for smaller firms.

An indirect utility model is employed for measuring farmers’ willingness to voluntarily accept yield losses for a reduction in environmental risk by decreasing pesticide use. Results support the hypothesis that farmers have self-described risk perceptions that enable them to make assessments of risk-yield tradeoffs. Policies designed to encourage and assist farmers making voluntary pesticide reductions can result in environmental risk reduction.

Though there are many challenges facing extension economists, there are significant opportunities to serve rural America and fully participate in our profession. National studies have reconfirmed extension as an integral part of our land grant mission, and a survey of chairs of departments of agricultural and resource economics shows that 87% indicate that there is increased or constant pressure by the public for programing by extension economists. Retirement estimates provided by chairs suggest it is likely that at least one-half of new faculty hired over the next five years will have extension appointments. Perhaps most importantly, there are critical societal issues to which extension economists can make valuable contributions.

With the end of the Supermarket Revolution in the 1970s, new forms of horizontal, vertical, and geographic competition have appeared to challenge the supremacy of the supermarket format. New retail formats like warehouse stores, supercenters, and fast-food outlets appear to affect local retail supermarket prices. Slotting allowances, coupons, and electronic data gathering have intensified retailer-manufacturer rivalry. Foreign direct investment offers the promise of new European-style management styles in U.S. grocery retailing.

We estimate the potential negative effects of underground natural gas storage on local residents using hedonic regression and a sample of Indiana properties transacted between 2004 and 2013. We find that underground natural gas storage activities significantly reduce property values. Property values increase by about 10 percent at a distance of 1 kilometer from a storage field. Each additional storage well and observation well located near a property reduces the property's value by about 0.43 percent and 2.64 percent, respectively. Our research sheds new light on a previously unexplored aspect of natural gas resource activities.

Global attempts to limit greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions may impact on agricultural trade and producer returns, particularly in countries such as New Zealand, where a relatively large proportion of GHG emissions originate from the agricultural sector. This study uses an extended partial equilibrium agricultural trade model to analyze the effects of trade policy liberalization on agricultural production and trade, as well as on GHG emissions. Further analysis combines trade liberalization with GHG mitigation policy in the New Zealand and European dairy sectors, and the effects on producer returns and GHG emissions are predicted. As expected, full trade liberalization in the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) countries enhances producer returns in New Zealand's dairy sector, but reduces returns in the European Union's dairy sector.

A model analyzing household substitution of fuelwood for other heating fuels is needed to clarify the relationship between energy prices and patterns of forest resource utilization. This paper employs the household production methodology to model fuelwood demand in Rhode Island. Data from a cross-sectional survey of 515 households are employed to test a discrete-choice model of household participation in wood-burning and a four-equation system modeling household production of heat and aesthetic benefits from fuelwood and stove capital. Control of selection bias via inclusion of an appropriate instrument allows analysis of aggregate demands. Some broad policy prescriptions applicable to the Northeast generally are presented.

An equilibrium-displacement model is combined with econometric estimates of key model parameters to identify the impacts of Canada's dairy advertising programs on prices and quantity. Results suggest increased advertising of fluid milk enhances the farm value of milk but has minimal effect on government costs of the dairy price-support program. Owing to government intervention in the butter market, increased butter advertising has no effect on the farm value of milk, at least in the short run, but is highly effective at reducing government costs. Advertising is most effective, ceteris paribus, in markets where retail demand and wholesale supply for the specific dairy product are relatively price inelastic.

Nitrous oxide is a powerful greenhouse gas that is emitted from cropland treated with nitrogen fertilizer. Reducing such emissions through nutrient management might be able to produce offsets for sale in a cap and trade program aimed at reducing greenhouse gases. We use the Nitrate Leaching and Economic Analysis Program (NLEAP) model and data from the Agricultural and Resource Management Survey to examine what changes in rate, timing, or method of application a farmer would take to produce offsets. We find that reducing the application rate is the most favored approach for producing offsets. We also find that some management choices may increase nitrate losses to water.

The vast majority of crop and revenue insurance policies sold in the United States are singlecrop policies that insure against low yields or revenues for each crop grown on the farm. But, increasingly, producer income is based more on the value of crops that have been converted into a value-added product such as ethanol. Moreover, the recent increases in energy and commodity price levels and volatilities emphasize the importance of risk management to ethanol investors. This paper uses an insurance approach to outline a risk management tool which mimics the gross margin level of a typical corn-based ethanol plant. The gross margin, premium, and indemnity levels are calculated on a per bushel basis to enable producers/investors to utilize the product based on their ownership share in the production facility. The fair premium rates are shown to be quite sensitive with respect to corn and energy price levels and volatilities.

Biofuels such as ethanol and biodiesel are increasingly promoted as green alternatives to petroleum-derived transport fuels. Scaling up feedstock production to produce enough biofuel to displace a significant portion of current petroleum demand will put pressure on land and water resources both domestically and internationally, however, and could potentially be accompanied by unacceptable changes in landscape-level land use patterns and provisioning of ecosystem services. Ensuring that feedstock production is sustainable and that biofuels provide the social and environmental benefits that are often attributed to them will require a carefully designed portfolio of agricultural, forestry, energy, and trade policies related to biofuels and feedstock production. Despite the difficulties associated with development and application of such policies, they should be in place before further policy incentive is provided for expansion of biofuel industries.

The thrust of this paper is to identify and measure structural changes in the U.S. demand for sugar and to derive subsequent implications for import restriction policies. Empirical results indicate that changes in consumer preferences and the availability of closer and cheaper sweeteners in food processing, especially high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), are exerting a downward pressure on sugar demand. As the U.S. demand for sugar decreases and the food industry adjusts faster to sweetener choices, the U.S. government would have to impose more restrictive import barriers to maintain prices to domestic sugar and HFCS producers. Furthermore, the welfare impact of U.S. sugar policy options on domestic consumers and food processors will be lessened.

Contingent-valuation estimates for white-water boating passengers are compared with Likert ratings by river guides. The approach involves asking whether passengers and their guides ordinally rank alternative flows the same. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Contingent Valuation Panel (1993) suggested “one might want to compare its (contingent-valuation's) outcome with that provided by a panel of experts.” River guides constitute a counterfactual panel of “experts.” For commercial trips, optimum flows are 34,000 cfs and 31,000 cfs for passengers and guides, and the comparable figures for private trips are 28,000 cfs and 29,000 cfs. In the NOAA Panel framework, passengers can evaluate the consequences of various river flows and translate this into contingent-valuation responses.

Smallholder agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa is largely exposed to pervasive market failures, translating into missed opportunities and sub-optimal economic behavior. These failures can partly be traced to the importance of economies of scale in procuring inputs and marketing produce, where smallholders face disproportionately high transaction costs. Producer organizations could help to lessen transaction costs; however, only a few farmers in Uganda sell through them. We introduce two interventions aimed at promoting marketing via producer organizations: cash on delivery, and information on sales, and analyze their impacts in an RCT design: We find that providing cash on delivery increases the probability that a member chooses to sell through the group, and hence the volumes bulked by each group. This increase in volumes appears to have enabled groups to secure higher prices for their produce. No significant effect could be found for providing information on sales.

The objective of this article is to estimate historical economic surpluses for the subsectors involved in the U.S. sugar market. Annual producer and consumer surpluses were computed based on a five-equation model and 1958–87 data. In the last decade, the welfare position of cane- and beet-sugar producers has been roughly maintained, the domestic consumer surplus and the export quasi-rents to foreign countries have both declined, and quasi-rents of the corn-sweetener industry now surpass those that accrue to the cane industry and are about the same as those of the beet-sugar industry. Some policy implications are discussed.

A mixed-integer linear programming model was formulated to minimize the cost of transport and processing of excess manure in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. The results showed that primarily poultry manure was moved out of surplus counties for land application or processing. In the base model, annual cost was more than $350 million, with the bulk of the cost arising from construction of energy facilities for poultry manure. Forestland application of poultry manure had the lowest average cost, and more forestland than agricultural land was used for manure application. The lowest cost scenario was $127 million annually when constraints were removed to expand manure application on agricultural land and allow unlimited construction of composting facilities. Such a low-cost solution could not realistically be implemented without further development of markets for compost.

Data from a sample of Rhode Island households indicate that firewood use along with wood stove use is increasing in response to increases in conventional heating fuel costs. More than half the sample of households reported the intention to reduce their heating fuel costs as their primary reason for burning wood. For nearly 20 percent of the households, the 1977–78 study season was the first heating season that these households had burned firewood. Among wood stove users, 50 percent began using a wood stove for the first season, the 1977–78 study season. Regression results indicate that the variables price, income and primary reason firewood is burned are important in the household's decision on the quantity of firewood burned.

This paper examines the effects of local workforce creativity on county-level earnings. Descriptive analysis of the data shows that most of the high-creativity counties in the United States are part of metropolitan areas, and that employee earnings are high in these places. Regression results indicate that, other things being equal, workforce creativity enhances county-level labor earnings. However, the returns to creativity that we found can be confirmed only in the urban context. An extension of the analysis suggests that the creative workforce wage premium may be capturing the effects of “technical workforce creativity” on earnings.