The economic impact of wildlife-associated recreation in the Southeast United States was evaluated using a general equilibrium model. Exogenous demand shocks to the regional economy were based on estimates of expenditures by wildlife recreationists on hunting, fishing, and wildlife watching activities. Counterfactual simulations were carried out, making alternative assumptions about labor and capital mobility and their supply. Without wildlife-associated recreation expenditures, regional employment would have been smaller by up to 783 thousand jobs, and value added would have been $22 to $48 billion less. These findings underscore the significance of regional factor market conditions in economic impact and general equilibrium analysis.

A growing segment of society is concerned about a myriad of health and environmental issues related to the use of pesticides and other agricultural chemicals. Despite the leveling-off of agricultural chemical use in the 1980s, chemical use in agriculture has come to be seen as a two-edged sword. On the positive side, agricultural chemicals have become the engine for world-wide productivity gains. These chemicals have contributed to increased yields per acre and have reduced waste in storage and distribution. On the negative side, agricultural chemicals are perceived by many to present risks to the safety of the food we eat, to the quality of our drinking water, to the wildlife population, to applicators and to people who inadvertently come into point contact with them.

A differential approach is employed to analyze demand for meat in the United Kingdom during 1989-99. Differential demand systems with fixed price effects (Rotterdam and CBS) better explain consumers' retail purchase allocation decisions for beef, lamb, pork, bacon and poultry compared with models containing variable price effects (NBR and differential AIDS). The real expenditure and the Hicksian demand elasticities are generally found to be quite different from earlier studies using AIDS models. A quality change index of meat consumption is constructed from the estimated CBS model estimation results and decomposed into real expenditure, substitution, trend, seasonal and residual effects.

A survey of 1599 randomly selected Florida households was conducted in 2012 to evaluate the consumer characteristics and economic impacts of local food purchases through retail stores, restaurants, and direct-to-consumer market channels. The total annual value of local food purchases averaged $1114 per household and represented 20.1% of food purchased for at-home consumption. The total economic impacts of local food purchases in Florida were estimated at 183,625 jobs and $10.47 billion in value-added, including regional multiplier effects for agricultural production and wholesale and retail distribution. These values are significantly higher than found in previous studies in other states.

This study used a new body of quarterly data to estimate multilateral import demand relations for soybeans and soymeal. The countries of origin were the United States, Brazil, and Argentina. The areas of destination were the EEC, Japan, and Eastern Europe. The results indicated that own- and cross-price elasticities were quite large. These demand relations were then inverted and solved for prices to examine the effect on total revenue of increases in supplies from each of the exporting countries. Results showed that, in all cases except one, own-total revenue was inflexible with respect to increase in the own-quantity supplied. These results imply that an increase in exports will be associated with smaller proportional increase in revenue from exports.

A capitalization approach is used to estimate econometrically the effects of exchange rate, interest rate and tax law changes on thoroughbred yearling prices. The analysis found that exchange rate and tax law changes have significantly influenced yearling prices since the early 1980s. Another serious price-reducing event was the 1986 tax law change. Both of these factors have counteracted the positive impact of increased purse rates on yearling prices.

Many farm operators strive to increase and stabilize the net returns of their farming operation. The opportunity to affect annual net returns may lie in the reorganization of products and inputs, firm growth and introduction of non-traditional enterprises. There has been considerable research on reorganization and firm growth. However, since new enterprises adaptable to a farm firm organization are often based on technological innovations, economic research usually lags behind for these new enterprises. This implies some farm operators may become involved in a non-traditional farm enterprise before the economic status of the enterprise is established.

This study examines water system characteristics, managers' attitudes and perceptions toward water conservation, and future planning strategies that influence the adoption of water conservation programs for urban and rural communities. We surveyed water system managers in Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Florida; and we parameterized predictive adoption models for price-based (PC) and nonprice-based (NPC) conservation programs. Notably, results suggest that information about the price elasticity of water demand for a community does encourage PC and NPC adoption; and we found no evidence that PC and NPC adoption is jointly considered by water systems.

Using optimization techniques in a Simulation framework, this study demonstrates the synergy between risk balancing and alternative strategies in effectively reducing risk under changing farm conditions. Highly risk-averse farmers tend to prefer integrated risk-management plans, based on the diversification principle, that yield offsetting combinations of the risk-reducing benefits of most strategies and the profit-generating capacities of the others. The greater appeal of a more diversified plan usually downplays the risk balancing strategy as the farm utilizes credit reserves to implement other production and marketing plans considered essential to Overall risk reduction. The farm, however, still realizes overall, though more regulated, reduction in its financial risk position.

For a long time, the consensus of old farmers sitting around crossroads stores has been that, sooner or later, America is going to run out of agricultural land because of all the houses, shopping centers, and highways that are spreading out onto the nation's cropland. And for years, such observations have been summarily dismissed as the ravings of ignorant men with too much time on their hands. Yet in the last half of the 1970s, a significant part of the educated elite in the United States began to suspect that those old farmers just might be correct. The farm press began to run articles concerning the loss of prime agricultural land to urban sprawl (Johnson); some of the more prestigious national journals appealing to educated laymen began to publish articles on the subject (Blundell); and even general circulation newspapers that seldom deign to print anything other than stories on political corruption or murder and mayhem devoted space to feature-length articles warning of the loss of cropland to non-agricultural uses (Burnside).

Nitrogen applied before planting is more vulnerable to loss to the environment than nitrogen applied during the growing season, but the growing season application can increase the risk of lower yields caused by adverse weather that prohibits farmers to complete N application. An expected utility framework is used to illustrate the potential economic benefit of insurance for a farmer to reduce this risk cost. An expected-value variance analysis is used to illustrate the potential benefit of insurance to Iowa corn growers who apply N fertilizer only during the growing season.

This study estimated import demands for U.S. fresh grapefruit in Japan, France, Canada, and the Netherlands. Historically, these nations have imported about 90 percent of U.S. grapefruit exports. Four import demand functions were specified and estimated by joint generalized least squares based on the sample period 19691 to 1988IV. Results show that U.S. FOB price, per capita income of importing countries, exchange rates, price of substitutes, U.S. grapefruit promotion programs, and removal of trade restrictions have had an important effect on U.S. fresh grapefruit exports. Analyses suggest that U.S. producers can effectively promote fresh grapefruit in foreign markets, and that trade concessions have an important influence on grapefruit exports.

The Rio Grande has headwaters in Colorado, flows through New Mexico, and serves as the United States-Mexico border in Texas, emptying into the Gulf of Mexico. Snow melt in Colorado and northern New Mexico constitutes the water river supply for New Mexico and the El Paso region, whereas summer monsoonal flow from the Rio Conchos in Mexico and tributaries, including the Pecos River, provides the Rio Grande flow for southern Texas. The region is mostly semiarid with frequent long-term drought periods but is also characterized by a substantial irrigated agriculture sector and a rapidly growing population. International treaties and interstate compacts provide the rules for allocation of Rio Grande waters between the United States and Mexico and among Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas. Water rights in Texas have been adjudicated, but the adjudication process was based on a wet period; hence, contemporary Rio Grande water rights are overallocated. Issues related to the waters of the Rio Grande include frequent drought, increased municipal demand caused by a rapidly increasing population, supply variability, underdeliveries from Mexico, increasing salinity, inefficient delivery systems, health issues of the population, no economic/financial incentives for farmers to conserve, and water is not typically priced for efficiency. Stakeholders are interested in identifying solutions to limited water supplies while there is increasing demand. There are several activities in place addressing Rio Grande-related water needs, including enhancing delivery distribution efficiency of raw water, conversion of rights from agriculture to urban, improving both agricultural irrigation field distribution and urban use efficiency, developments in desalination, and litigation. None of the solutions are easy or inexpensive, but there are encouraging cooperative attitudes between stakeholders.

Government farm support programs such as Loan Deficiency Payments (LDP) and Counter-Cyclical Payments (CCP) have payoff structures that effectively make them costless price insurance instruments. A combination of these payments with yield insurance may provide a viable alternative to revenue insurance. This paper finds that, contrary to expectations, the revenue product analyzed is uniformly superior to yield insurance under both current (2002) and proposed (2008) Farm Bill structures of government payments. Given minor adjustments, however, yield insurance combined with government payments can provide more effective risk management than revenue insurance in production areas with low yield–price correlation.

Risk analyses often require a measure of individual risk aversion. Here a procedure is presented to calculate risk aversion parameter ranges wherein individuals would exhibit preference among a set of risky prospects.

The objective of this study is to analyze whether a discount or premium exists for coordination strategies in food processing, wholesale grocery, retail supermarkets, and restaurants. Significant premiums are found for food processor and restaurant vertical integration or diversification strategies. Significant discounts are found for food wholesaler and retail supermarket integration or diversification strategies. Food processors are found to be integrating toward retail supermarkets during this time period.

With the aim of examining the causal structure between foreign directinvestment (FDI) and economic growth, this study derives inductive causalinference using the directed acyclic graph approach, which makes no a prioricausal assumptions. There are three major findings of this study. First,economic growth causes FDI inflows for developing countries, whereas FDIinduces economic growth for developed countries. Second, trade is animportant intermediary to facilitate the interaction between FDI and otherfactors. Third, the stock market is found to be an intermediary thatamplifies the influence on FDI from many causal variables of FDI fordeveloped countries.

This study examines grain sorghum storage decisions in the Texas Coastal Bend region. Decisions involving use and non-use of outlook information are compared using stochastic dominance criteria. Results indicate outlook information is of value to most classes of decisionmakers. The value of outlook information, however, is contingent upon producers' risk preferences. The methodology presented could be used to evaluate a more extensive set of marketing strategies for grain sorghum as well as for other crops.

The paper examines the joint adoption of conservation tillage, crop rotations, and soil testing by small and limited-resource farmers in the Southeast. The objectives are to determine the potential eligibility of small farmers for the Conservation Security Program, examine socioeconomic factors affecting adoption, and assess the interdependence between adopting different conservation practices. Results indicate that conservation management, ethnicity, and farm characteristics affect practice adoption. Of the producers surveyed in the study, 7% meet Conservation Security Program eligibility requirements, while the other 93% have less than a 20% likelihood of adopting the needed practices to qualify.

A logistic regression (logit) model was developed to examine how socioeconomic characteristics of cow-calf producers influenced their perceptions of themselves as profit maximizers. Amount of pasture acreage, percent of income earned from the cow-calf operation, and desire to increase net worth and efficiently use labor significantly increased the producer's probability of claiming to be in the business primarily to maximize profits. Some sociological reasons for owning cattle significantly reduced the probability of the producer claiming to be a profit maximizer while others significantly increased the probability.