This study estimates the economic impact of outdoor recreation as a contributor to total value of forest resources in an area which has been heavily infested by Mountain Pine Beetle. The area of study was the Island Park are in eastern Idaho's Targhee National Forest. Targhee is a popular recreation area west of Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks. Recreationists use the area for both destination and non-destination purposes. The recreation opportunities of this area include water sports, hiking and related outdoor activities. It is classed as one of Idaho's major recreation areas.

Quality discounts and premiums for rough rice in Texas rice bid/acceptance markets are analyzed. The most important quality factors determining the value of rough rice are head yield and peck. A one percentage point reduction in peck damage raises the price received per hundredweight of rough rice by $.13 to $.68 across markets and years. Since peck damage can be reduced by controlling the rice stinkbug, evaluation of alternative methods for better control of this pest in Texas rice fields is needed.

This article determines the accuracy of quarterly land value forecasts provided by bankers through the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City's Survey of Agricultural Credit Conditions. Bankers' qualitative forecasts of up, down, or no change are compared against actual, self-reported changes in land values. A large proportion of bankers forecast no change. Despite this action, aggregates of bankers' qualitative forecasts help predict changing land values and forecast better than naïve models. Thus, the forecasts in the survey are helpful in predicting land values.

Rural-urban differences in the supply of nursing home services are hypothesized to be jointly affected by competitive and regulatory forces, government policies, and the cost structure. Study findings indicate that rural services are slightly less accessible and lower in quality. A translog cost share function reveals no difference in the operating cost structure of rural and urban homes. Cost shares for nursing care are directly related to the degree of skilled nursing provided by homes. Significant scale economies were not detected for any of the major operating costs.

This study examines the return on agricultural assets relative to nonfinancial corporate assets in the general economy using aggregate Bureau of Economic Analysis data. Our results indicate that the rate of return on nonfarm assets dominates the rate of return on agricultural assets. The average rate of return on nonfarm assets is higher than the average rate of return on farm assets, and the variance of the rate of return on nonfarm assets is lower than the variance of the rate of return on farm assets. Furthermore, the rate of return on agricultural assets only exceeds the rate of return in the nonfarm sector in 1992.

A conceptual optimal control theory model which considers farm level decision making with respect to soil management is developed. A simplified version of the theoretical model is applied to the Piedmont area of Virginia. The model includes the productivity impacts of both soil erosion and technological progress. Both the theoretical model and its empirical application are improvements over previous efforts. Results suggest that farmers in the study area can achieve substantial reductions in soil erosion by adopting alternative farming practices.

The differential demand system or Rotterdam model is extended to include lagged consumption through translation parameters, allowing habit and inventory effects. Applications of the model to annual U.S. expenditure and weekly juice sales data illustrate the importance of the time interval of an observation on the relative strengths of the habit inventory.

We used the open-ended contingent valuation method to elicit willingness to pay (WTP) for day visitors and extended visitors on the Ocala National Forest (ONF), Florida. A Tobit model specification was applied to account for the issues involved with censored WTP bids. The results reveal that visitors would pay more for improved recreational facilities at the ONF. In particular, our estimates show that visitors would pay $1 million for basic facilities, $1.9 million for moderate improvements, and $2.5 million for more improvements.

The growth in winter canola acreage in the southern Great Plains has led to questions about the best way to reduce price risk because there is no U.S. canola futures market. Cross-hedge ratios and hedging effectiveness are calculated, and encompassing tests are conducted for short-horizon hedging. Possible cross-hedge markets considered are U.S. soybeans, soybean oil, soybean meal, hard red winter wheat, and Canadian canola. The selected cross hedge is a combination of soybean oil and meal futures, but its hedging effectiveness is substantially less than what is typically provided by a direct hedge.

Since 2017, the Japanese government has been phasing out the use of non-native bumblebees as greenhouse tomato pollinators due to their ecological risks. We used an online questionnaire to investigate whether pollination methods affect consumers’ willingness to pay (WTP) for tomatoes. We found that consumers valued the use of non-native bumblebees more than hormonal treatment and native more than non-native bees. Moreover, we found that informing consumers of the ecological risks increased WTP for native bumblebees and hormonal treatment. These results suggest that pollination method labeling may help protect ecosystems from the threat of non-native species.

This paper explores the effect farmer perceptions concerning how best management practice (BMP) adoption changes the profit distribution have on BMP adoption incentives and the potential for insurance to increase these incentives. Adoption indifference curves illustrate the effect of farmer perceptions on BMP adoption incentives and the potential for insurance to expand the set of perceptions consistent with adoption. Empirical analysis quantifies these conceptual results for nutrient BMP insurance, a new policy available to corn farmers as part of a USDA-Risk Management Agency pilot program in four states. Results indicate that nutrient BMP insurance can have economically relevant effects on farmer adoption incentives.

The 1985 Farm Bill departs from recent farm bills in moving toward more restrictive acreage control. The change from a two- to a five-year average in calculating base acreage and enforcement of limited cross-compliance appear to significantly alter crop mix decisions on representative Alabama cotton farms.

We attempt to value health risks by combining traditional demand impact analysis with direct elicitation of individuals' risk perceptions of food safety. We examine the impact of multiple risks of related goods on consumption of a risky good. We argue that the consumption of a risky good depends on both its absolute risk level and its relative risks to other risky goods. Seafood consumption in eastern North Carolina was studied. We elicited, in a survey, individual perceived risks as reference points to derive the economic value of reducing health risk in seafood consumption. Revealed and stated data were combined to trace out demand changes in response to absolute and relative risk reductions. Our results show that seafood consumption is affected by the perceived absolute risk and by the relative risk to poultry and that individuals react to the multiple risks in a nonlinear way, as was suggested by our analytical model.

The amount of land in urban and other special uses increased more than 50 percent since the 1960s in the South. Rural land converted to urban uses is directly related to increases in population in the South. Urban land-use coefficients were estimated to provide a measure of the amount of land converted to urban uses per person added to the population base. These coefficients indicate that from 1974 to 1987 two-thirds to three fourths of an acre of land was converted to urban uses for each person added to the population base. At this rate, about 12.6 million acres are expected to be converted to urban use in the South during the next two decades.

A model to value Federal Agricultural Mortgage Corporation (Farmer Mac) agricultural mortgage-backed securities (AMBS) is developed and numerically solved. The results suggest prepayment penalties currently being used by Farmer Mac reduce yields on AMBS considerably. Even with prepayment penalties, it can be advantageous for profit maximizing mortgagors to optimally prepay or even default on agricultural mortgages. The model is used to quantify prepayment and default risk by valuing the embedded options in the mortgages. Monte Carlo simulation is also used to determine the probability of optimal prepayment given the term structure assumption used to develop the model.

Over $1.7 billion has been spent on the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) since 1985. The purpose of this study is to show that these expenditures have aided the environment. Rather than quantify changes in environmental variables, a spatial econometric model is used to test if CRP enrollments are greater in counties with poorer environmental quality. In seven of nine regions, CRP enrollments are higher in counties with an environmental concern. This positive finding justifies past expenditures by the CRP and supports continued funding as an environmental program. The CRP is targeting current environmental concerns that will lead to future improvement.

Consumers' willingness to pay for natural Christmas tree characteristics are estimated. Differences in willingness to pay for characteristics by specie knowledge and lack of specie knowledge are tested. Differences in willingness to pay for characteristics by specie are also tested. The results suggests that willingness to pay measures differ by these separations of the sample and, ceteris paribus, sellers of natural Christmas trees could benefit by altering characteristics in accordance with the results of these sample separation tests.

Herein we explore the economic value of delaying inevitable environmental damage due to aquatic invasive species, which is a problem especially relevant to tropic and subtropical regions. We developed an analytical framework and tested it using a stated preference survey. The results suggest that delaying the impacts can be valuable. Other tests reveal characteristics of the willingness-to-pay estimates that are consistent with economic theory.

Farmland reallocation between farmers through rental transactions is critical for improving Japanese rice productivity. This study examined effects of socio-institutional and emotional factors as well as economic factors on rental transactions. A stochastic choice model was applied to contingent valuation data by considering regional heteroscedasticity. Empirical results showed (1) existence of economic inefficiencies, 3% loss of economic surplus due to socio-institutional restriction, which is probably reflected in transaction costs; (2) a 15% reduction in surplus due to emotional reluctance of farmers; and (3) strong influences of rice price, wages, and geographical location on the rental rate and agreement level.

This study examines the Law of One Price (LOP) in international commodity markets using fractional cointegration analysis. For proper evaluation of the LOP, fractional cointegration analysis seems to be appropriate because of its flexibility in capturing a wider range of mean reversion behavior than standard cointegration analysis. Out of nine pairs of price series examined, fractional cointegration supports the existence of the LOP in eight cases, as compared to three cases using standard cointegration procedures. Overall, these results suggest that there is a long-run tendency for the LOP to hold for commodity prices.