A rank-ordered logit model is estimated using data collected by a mail survey of consumers in the northeastern and mid-Atlantic United States. The methodology, based on conjoint analysis, determines the average relative importance and value of three product attributes for fresh salmon (seafood inspection, production method, and price), and estimates the relative attractiveness of particular products to consumers. When used in combination with demographic data and responses to questions on perceptions, the analysis suggests market segmentations and potential marketing strategies based on the heterogeneity in preferences among consumers.

Restructuring of electric power markets is proceeding across the United States and in many other nations around the world. The performance of these markets will influence everything from the prices faced by consumers to the reliability of the systems. The challenges of these changes present many important areas for research. For much of the northeastern United States, restructuring proposals include, at least for the short term, the formation of a single-sided auction mechanism for the wholesale market. This research uses experimental methods to analyze how these markets may function. In the experiments, the two basic uniform price auction rules are tested under three different market sizes. Early experimental results suggest the commonly proposed last-accepted-offer auction works well, but market power could be a real concern.

Recent attempts to test the validity of the contingent valuation method have relied on laboratory-type experiments. In these experiments, willingness to pay responses in hypothetical choice experiments are compared with responses from choice experiments requiring actual payments. Often evidence of hypothetical bias is found. Critical for these experimental tests of hypothetical surveys is that the methodology used to elicit willingness to pay from subjects in the real-payment experiment be demand revealing. If it is not, then differences in responses to hypothetical and real valuation questions could be due to free-riding in the real-payment survey and not due to hypothetical bias in the hypothetical survey. This paper reports on experiments that implement a theoretically incentive-compatible revelation mechanism (a closed referendum) to elicit responses to valuation questions in both hypothetical and real experiments. As in earlier studies, evidence of an upward hypothetical bias is found.

This paper examines the impact of pesticide regulation on the number of new pesticide registrations and pesticide toxicity. Results suggest that regulation adversely affects new pesticide introductions but encourages the development of pesticides with fewer toxic side effects. The estimated regression model implies that a 10% increase in regulatory costs (about $1.5 million per pesticide) causes a 5% reduction in the number of pesticides with higher toxicity.

During the last two decades, product labeling has become an increasingly used policy tool, particularly with respect to the provision of health and environmental information. Theory holds that the flow of information among market participants plays a critical role in the efficient operation of markets. This paper explores the role of product labeling policy in ameliorating two potential market deficiencies: asymmetric information and costly search behavior. Practical considerations for the design and implementation of labeling policy and of labeling research are explored.

This paper studies the preferences and willingness-to-pay of individuals for volunteer water quality monitoring programs. The study involves supporting water quality monitoring at two ponds in the state of Rhode Island. The paper uses both a hypothetical and a real-payment contingent valuation survey to directly measure individual preferences and willingness-to-pay (WTP) for volunteer water quality monitoring at the two ponds. The overall results of the study suggest that hypothetical WTP is not statistically greater than real WTP, and that the average survey respondent is willing to support water quality monitoring on one of the two ponds. The study also finds that the specified purpose of water quality monitoring and certain socioeconomic characteristics of a respondent significantly affect the respondent's decision to support volunteer water quality monitoring.

Consumers are increasingly considering information on the safety and process (how foods are produced) attributes of food in making their buying decisions. Producers, processors, and retailers may choose voluntary labeling of these attributes, may be required to label by government regulations, or may use a combination of these approaches. The market effects depend on consumer perceptions of the attributes, the benefits and costs of labeling for companies, and the goals of government policy. These effects are illustrated through a discussion of labeling of foods that are produced with the use of biotechnology (genetically modified organisms) or that are organically grown.

A model of the domestic demand for eggs was estimated from quarterly data over the period 1987 through 1995, incorporating an index of consumer dietary cholesterol concerns and generic advertising efforts by the American Egg Board and the California Egg Commission. Empirical results indicated that most of the observed change in egg demand could be explained by dietary cholesterol concerns. Simulating the model in a constant elasticity supply framework demonstrated that advertising efforts over the past several years have resulted in net benefits to egg producers largely when considering inelastic supply responses. However, considering trade bias reduces these benefit-cost ratios substantially.

The Northeast Interstate Dairy Compact has been established to regulate milk prices. Simulation models show impacts on Vermont farms of alternative milk prices and accelerated productivity growth. Enhancing prices (by $0.85/cwt) improves financial performance the most, while impacts of doubling growth in milk production/cow (to 2.6% per year) and setting a price floor (which reduces the standard deviation of the price by 19% and raises prices $0.12/cwt) are substantially smaller. These impacts are inversely related to farm profitability. However, impacts on larger farms are not proportionately larger than those on smaller farms. Reducing price variability has smaller impacts than the $0.12/cwt price increase.

The Nutrition Labeling and Education Act (NLEA) prohibits health claims for foods containing more than a certain amount of fat per serving. This disqualifier level eliminates health claims for cooking oils since these products have approximately 14 grams of fat per serving, above the acceptable threshold. However, a number of scientific studies indicate that, from a heart-health perspective, cooking oils lower in saturated fat and higher in monounsaturated fats are superior to other oils. Prior to the NLEA, firms actively competed on this basis, with manufacturers of cooking oils making explicit heart-health claims in print advertising and labeling. This study utilizes supermarket scanner data from twenty stores to examine the type of cooking oil chosen by consumers. The results indicate that after implementation of the NLEA, consumers shifted purchases toward cooking oils higher in saturated fat and lower in monounsaturated fat. This study does not address whether consumers changed their total consumption of cooking oil after implementation of the NLEA.

The role of land values in the dairy industry of an urban-influenced region is investigated by estimating a dairy herd equation based on pooled cross-section and time-series data from counties in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and New York. The use of cross-terms between hypothesized causal variables and a dummy variable capturing the effect of location allowed the estimation of the differences across states in the effects of milk, feed, and land prices. Results confirm the important role of rising land values in the decline of the dairy industry in the tri-state area, and suggest greater vulnerability of dairy enterprises in urban-influenced areas to rising adverse economic forces. The adverse effects of declining milk prices and higher land values are greatest in New Jersey. The results support the notion that programs such as price support, farmland preservation, farmland assessment, and right-to-farm may have to be maintained in order to retain dairy farms at the urban fringe, where land values are rising rapidly.

Cost-effectiveness is an important consideration in evaluating choices for meeting environmental quality objectives. Estimated crop yield response functions and the associated groundwater-nitrate pollution production functions were used to evaluate the optimal N fertilization and on-farm abatement costs for alternative cropping systems, with management choices at both the intensive and extensive margins. The cost-effective corn production system, which meets the Health Canada standard for nitrates with the highest returns ($278 ha–1) and lowest on-farm abatement cost ($248 ha–1), was a four-year corn-corn-soybean-wheat rotation under conventional tillage. At contaminant limits above the Health Canada standard, the cost-effective wheat cropping system shifted from a soybean-wheat rotation under no-tillage to a corn-soybean-wheat rotation under no-tillage.

Reducing costs of controlling nonpoint source (NPS) pollution will be a high public priority in the next century. Compliance and transaction costs of reducing nitrogen runoff from dairies in the Lower Susquehanna Watershed by 40% are estimated for perfectly targeted and uniform performance standards. The perfectly targeted standard reduces compliance and transaction costs by almost 75% compared with the uniform standard. Future NPS control policies should use spatial information to target policy resources to priority concerns, areas, and farms. Further research is needed to lower the costs and increase the accuracy of spatial information.

This study compares two methods of estimating a reduced form model of fresh tomato marketing margins: an econometric and an artificial neural network (ANN) approach. Model performance is evaluated by comparing out-of-sample forecasts for the period of January 1992 to December 1994. Parameter estimates using the econometric model fail to reject a dynamic, imperfectly competitive, uncertain relative price spread margin specification, but misspecification tests reject both linearity and log-linearity. This nonlinearity suggests that an inherently nonlinear method, such as a neural network, may be of some value. The neural network is able to forecast with approximately half the mean square error of the econometric model, but both are equally adept at predicting turning points in the time series.

An empirical analysis reveals that states with more highly educated populations have better environmental conditions, after controlling for income, population density, and industrial composition. The strategy of raising human capital stocks to maintain or improve environmental quality is proposed as a complement, if not an alternative, to direct government intervention, which consists of command and control, market incentives, and moral suasion. Under this approach, general education becomes the control variable that guides economic behavior in a manner consistent with long-term environmental sustainability.

The growth of the poultry industry in Arkansas has exploded in the past decade. As a result, approximately 1.5 million tons of litter are produced every year. Concerns about possible contamination of ground and surface water from land applications of poultry litter have been raised. This paper compares four policy scenarios in terms of their efficiency and practicality to manage land applications of poultry litter. The results indicate that a litter tax per ton of litter applied could achieve the same level of litter control as that of a land tax on litter applications, but at a lower tax rate.

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.

U.S. agricultural conservation policy has focused on a range of potential policy instruments centered on voluntary approaches tied into Depression-era commodity programs. Entering the twenty-first century, conservation policy is at a crossroads between more coercive regulatory policies, more costly voluntary programs, and more facilitative market-oriented policies. What are the pitfalls, advantages, disadvantages, and tradeoffs along these paths?

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.

This paper considers the treatment of “don't know” (DK) responses to referendum contingent valuation questions. The determinants of DK responses are empirically analyzed using a data set from a survey of old growth forest valuation. It is found that DK respondents possess unique characteristics that differentiate them from Yes and No respondents. These findings do not support the most common treatments of DK responses that are currently used. Responses to an open-ended question included in the survey are used to provide further insight into the preferences of DK respondents.