With weather index insurance expanding and common property resources diminishing in low-income agricultural areas, it is essential to understand the potential effects of such insurance on resources that serve as vital input bases for low-income households. Using simple analytical constructs, we illustrate how index insurance may increase or decrease use of common property resources depending on common implementation characteristics such as binding constraints and multiple sources of income in a multi-temporal decision context. This analysis of how index insurance might assist low-income families without degrading the commons can be informative for insurance administrators and policymakers.

Research using the Agricultural Resource Management Survey (ARMS) and other data shows that direct government payments to farmers increase rents and the price of land. However, some ARMS data is imputed and does not account for relationships between payments and other variables. We investigate various imputation methods and benefits gained from a method with a wide scope rather than a parsimonious range of variables. Using our method, we estimate that an additional dollar of direct payment increases land value about $2.69 more per acre than ARMS imputation methods and that our imputations (using an exhaustive iterative sequential regression) outperform other methods and/or smaller models.

This study examines vertical coordination in the wine industry emerging in Illinois. We find that quality matters as temporal issues related to grape perishability increase the probability of written contracts being used to procure grapes. Holdup concerns related to sourcing adequate quality grapes and at-risk investments in grape storage and winemaking equipment lead to vertical integration. In general, larger wineries must obtain some grapes from outside vineyards and sell wine predominantly through tasting rooms and distributors. Smaller wineries rely more on direct sales to retailers, festivals, and farmers' markets. Marketing outlet selection also reflects the types of wine produced.

We examine the causal relationships between ethanol production and the agricultural economy and rural incomes in the United States for 1981 through 2010. We use bivariate cointegration and Granger causality procedures and account for two structural breaks in ethanol production in the analysis, which shows that ethanol production Granger-caused agricultural net value added, agriculture's share of U.S. employment, net returns to operators, and rural income per capita in the short run. These causal relationships generally persisted in the long run. However, the causality between ethanol and rural incomes diminished in the long run.

As microbrew beers have become more popular, the intrinsic characteristics of beer have become more important in consumer purchasing decisions. We identify sensory properties that influence consumers' willingness to pay for beer using a contingent valuation model that includes subjective sensory evaluations and socio-demographic characteristics of consumers. We find that overall taste and hoppiness of a beer have a significant and positive impact on willingness to pay.

The objective of this study was to test for the effect of consequentiality on the probability of a respondent opting out of voting in a stated preference survey. We find that respondents who believe that the survey is inconsequential are more likely to opt out than to vote yes in both binomial-choice and multinomial-choice formats and are more likely to vote no than to opt out in the multinomial-choice format. We also find that respondents who are uncertain about consequentiality are more likely to opt out than to choose yes or no under both choice formats.

Soymilk is one of the fastest growing categories in the U.S dairy alternative functional beverage market. Using household-level purchase data from Nielsen's 2008 Homescan panel and the Tobit econometric procedure, we estimate conditional and unconditional own-price, cross-price, and income elasticities for soymilk, white milk, and flavored milk. Income, age, employment status, education level, race, ethnicity, region, and presence of children in a household are significant drivers of demand for soymilk. White milk and flavored milk are competitors for soymilk, and soymilk is a competitor for white milk. Strategies for pricing and targeted marketing of soymilk are also discussed.

Senegalese consumers prefer milk-based dairy products that are local and fresh to ones produced with imported powder. However, prices for fresh-milk-based and powder-based products are not significantly different. I address this puzzle by first confirming the preference using choice-based conjoint data to evaluate whether Senegalese consumers will pay a significant positive premium for fresh local products. I then identify price determinants using a unique dataset of milk product characteristics. The results verify the Senegalese preference for fresh local dairy products and show that consumers' misinformation regarding product composition prevents them from allocating a higher price to local milk-based products.

This study examines the causal effect of a change in administration of the New York State milk price gouging law on retail milk prices. Specifically, we focus on the November 2008 shift from a threshold pricing policy that consisted of monthly announced prices to a fixed margin policy. Using a regression discontinuity approach, we find lower prices and thus increased consumer welfare for retail milk purchasers in New York State. Furthermore, the change in application of the law may have eliminated previously hypothesized coordination in pricing by retailers through a more competitive retail milk environment.