This paper is concerned only with research that is intended to guide, influence, or illuminate public policy choices. As professionals, we economists exhibit an unfortunate contradiction in values. Economists insist on making value judgments because they are needed to do research on public policy issues, and, simultaneously, insist on not discussing them, thereby keeping ourselves ignorant about what we are doing.

This article, heralding the new year, clearly indicated that 1983 would be a period of tight budgets in virtually every state. A survey of 25 state capitals revealed that state revenues have been steadily declining. Policy Reports, a new bimonthly publication, surveyed the 16 states where newly elected governors will be inaugurated in January, 1983, and found that none had advocated a tax increase.

The microcomputer is becoming an important tool for the land grant institution in serving agriculture. Its applications present clientele with unprecedented opportunities for increasing the use of information systems, analytical and record-keeping tools, and the research results reported by land grant institutions to improve the decision-making process in agriculture.

I have often heard the microcomputer compared to the tractor with respect to its potential impact on agriculture in the United States. From the viewpoint of agriculture as a whole, such comparisons must be regarded as overstated.

Perhaps out of a concern for efficiency, or for other reasons, we develop or adopt rules—the simpler are called “rules of thumb”—to direct and govern much of our behavior. The bases for these rules are many and varied, assumption, conventional wisdom, experience, theory, to mention a few.

The food stamp and other assistance programs for low-income households require continual adjustment if some form of equity across time is to be achieved. For this reason, cost-of-living adjustments and related mechanisms for reflecting changes in prices and the economic status of the target populations have been used in formulae for computing the food stamp bonus and other welfare transfers.

Most of us involved in agricultural research and education are aware of the tremendous aid to our work computers have provided over the past 20 to 25 years. But the innovation to which ECOP refers—the phenomenon of the microcomputer in agriculture–is just now unfolding.

In an earlier paper, Litzenberg reviewed many of the issues associated with computer use in the agricultural economics classroom. His work also included a survey of land grant university work, inventorying hardware resources and computer-related course offerings.

This paper examines the impact of federal fiscal-monetary (FM) policy on farm structure. FM policy is multifaceted but is confined here mainly to policies influencing aggregate demand. Inflation is defined as an increase in the general price level. Farm structure refers to farm size and numbers, tenure, legal organization, investment, capital-labor ratio, productivity, and status (part-time or full-time farming).

The productivity of modern agriculture is the result of a remarkable fusion of technology and science. In the West this fusion was built on ideological foundations that, from the early Middle Ages, have valued both the improvement of material well-being and the advancement of knowledge.

The transportation literature reveals several studies that attempt to model freight rates. These efforts are important as they provide insight into rate determinants and consequently assist firms in planning, provide input into transportation policy debates, and are of use in transportation and commodity research. In such studies, freight-rate variations typically are explained by differences in commodity types, competition from alternative modes, and distance (Perkins; Benishay and Whitaker; Binkley and Harrar; Ferguson and Glorfeld; Boles; Miklius). However, when shippers must rely on one mode to ship a very limited mix of goods to one or a few destinations, this approach is of little use in explaining rate variations. The produce industry is a case in point.

This article presents an analysis of factors influencing farm real eatate prices in the southeastern United States. The first step in the analysis is the use of a multivariate criterion to segment the regional market into homogeneous land resource components.

In an attempt to combat problems of insect resistance and the increasing cost of new insecticides, integrated pest management (IPM) systems have been developed for many crops, including cotton. Cotton IPM systems include such components as scouting to determine when control actions should be taken, planting trap crops, and using short season varieties of cotton. Regardless of the component(s) of IPM systems for cotton, when a decision is made that a direct control action is warranted, the control action most often used is the application of insecticides. Thus, although IPM strategies may reduce the frequency of insecticide applications and consequently reduce the possible problem of insecticide resistance, the use of conventional, broad-spectrum insecticides continues to be the primary control tool when insect outbreaks occur.

Forest management and planning is complex, involving the application of many scarce and diverse resources to the production and maintenance of a multitude of products and services from the forest over a relatively long period of time.