We evaluate agricultural bank management performance, focusing on the impacts of interstate banking laws on productivity change. The generalized Malmquist productivity index decomposes productivity change into technological change, technical efficiency change, and change in scale economies. While managerial productivity rose from 1982 to 1991, states that adopted the most liberal interstate banking laws experienced the greatest improvement in productivity. Large agricultural banks were more efficient in states that had more liberalized interstate banking laws while small agricultural banks fared better in states with more restrictive laws.

Markov chain analysis (one-step and long-run) is applied to the National Resources Inventory (NRI) database to evaluate changes in wind-based soil erosion rates over time. The research compares changes in soil erosion rates between NRI sample sites with and without applied conservation practices for a random sample of Great Plains counties. No significant differences between sites are found for half of the counties evaluated. The effectiveness and efficiency of conservation policies are thus questioned in light of these research results.

Zoning decisions related to residential lot size and density affect residential land value. Effects of size on residential parcel value in Roanoke County, VA, are estimated with fixed effects hedonic models. Parcel size; elevation; soil permeability; proximity to urban areas, malls, and roads; and location influence parcel value, but the effects vary by value of construction and development status. Parcel value per square meter declines with increasing parcel size. The estimated relationships could be used to evaluate zoning decisions in terms of land values and tax revenues if model estimation uncertainties and responses by developers to zoning strategies are considered.

The effect of the farmer's choice of crop insurance was evaluated on both the farmer's and lender's performance. This was done using whole-farm, Monte Carlo simulation for Texas wheat/sorghum operations. Results indicate crop insurance would be preferred by moderately risk-averse farmers when farm firm failure became an issue or the insurance loss ratio approached one. A lender always preferred the use of crop insurance, especially when the probability of firm bankruptcy was an issue.

During the 1970s, many changes have influenced U.S. agriculture. Researchers have devoted considerable attention to analyzing the effects of greater variability of agricultural product prices and means of coping with imperfect knowledge. Questions related to energy and the environment are receiving increased research emphasis. Hathaway has written on inflation and food prices and Tweeten has analyzed the real price effects of inflation on agriculture and total net farm income. Agricultural lenders, farmers, and others have expressed concern about higher land prices and capital requirements, but little research has been directed toward analyzing the effects of inflation at the firm level.

This research applies an inverse, almost ideal demand model with seasonal adjustments to estimate price–quantity relationships among major cut flower species traded at the Dutch flower auctions. Trigonometric functions are used as a flexible and efficient alternative to standard seasonal dummies. The estimated price and scale flexibilities were all found to be statistically significant with signs as expected. The demand for all flower groups is inflexible, and most of them are quantity substitutes. Based on the estimated values for price and scale flexibilities, a potential for market timing seems to exist, i.e., flower producers may use easily available calendar information to predict prices and quantities.

The impact of initial body condition scores on net returns from retaining beef cull cows for delayed marketing was investigated in a three-year experiment. Cows were retained either on native grass pasture or in a low-input dry lot setting. Net returns are examined across five alternative marketing periods, including culling. Sensitivity of net returns to changes in retention cost is also examined. Although a native grass pasture system was generally more profitable than a low-input dry lot system, thin and medium cows were typically more profitable than cows with higher initial body condition score regardless of the feeding system.

Although Canada has developed an effective animal identification system, and the provinces are progressing toward a system that has full traceback capabilities, the U.S. and Mexico have made little or no progress. Contemporary U.S. proposals for state initiatives will not work. In the meantime, the U.S. livestock industry will continue to lose markets for its products and has little to no basis for complaining about lost sales and the lack of open markets. Also indentified are relevant economic and political principles that both underlie animal identification systems and the failure to make positive steps forward toward establishing a North American animal identification system.

An expected-utility model and a chance-constrained linear programming model were used to analyze four marketing strategies and seven crop insurance alternatives for cotton marketing in Georgia. The results suggest that existing marketing tools and insurance alternatives can be used to reduce cotton producers' revenue risk. The optimal level of yield and price insurance coverage depends on an individual producer's risk aversion.

Communities interested in economic growth and development need to be concerned with understanding at least three aspects of the development process. The first deals with identifying existing and historical composition of industry in the community, including an explanation of how changes in the study area differ from changes in other areas, and an identification of industries in which the community has had a comparative advantage. The second aspect deals with the many considerations involved in increasing desired economic activity in the community. This includes business and industrial development. The third aspect is addressed to estimating impacts of growth and development on the local community. Knowledge of expected consequences of alternative growth and development possibilities improves residents' ability to select preferred types of community growth. All three aspects must necessarily be considered as a community strives to expand and improve economic opportunity for its residents.

Consumer acceptance of Choice, grain-finished beef has been attested in millions of American homes. Abundant feed grain and feeder calf supplies has made it possible for almost all Americans to purchase and consume feedlot beef.

Consumer acceptance of any product, however, can be changed when input substitutions in production are made. For various reasons, livestock producers may feel justified in changing inputs before analyzing an effect on the product or its demand. An example of input substitution occurred in mid-1974, when some beef producers began to market beef for slaughter directly from forage (or limited-grain) diets rather than after normal full-grain feeding. Consumer acceptance of forage-finished and limited-grain finished beef was uncertain at that time, particularly among customers of large supermarkets accustomed to Choice grade beef.

Obtaining estimates of pesticide productivity is an economic response to the growing public concern about the steady increase of pesticide use in the United States. This type of research indicates the cost of limiting pesticide use in terms of foregone output. Previous empirical studies give a “snap-shot”, or “average”, look at pesticide productivity. This research effort employs a random coefficient model to determine the trend of the marginal value product of pesticides in agriculture in the United States. Results show a distinct downward trend in two states, Iowa and Texas. California, however, shows no evidence of a downward trend.

Machinery costs are affected by inflation which, if not correctly considered, will bias cost estimates. Accurate estimates of machinery costs are essential in budgeting costs of crop production in farm policy programs, crop hedging decisions, and general cost of production research. Machinery decisions relating to replacement, size, and custom or leasing alternatives are also improved by realistic budgeting techniques.

The objective of this article is to examine appropriate adjustments for inflation in developing machinery costs through budgeting techniques. The authors attempt to demonstrate the adjustments necessary in both capital and traditional budgeting models to place cost estimates on a real basis. Capital budgeting is first compared with traditional budgeting. Next, by the use of a simple machinery example, the necessary adjustments to account for inflation are shown for a capital budgeting model that does not include income tax considerations. Similarly, the inflation adjustments are demonstrated for a traditional budgeting model that does not include income tax considerations. Finally, a capital budgeting model including income tax aspects is examined in reference to real and nominal after-tax cost estimates.

This study develops a three-county trade model of the United States, Mexico, and Canada to analyze the effects of the 2013 Suspension Agreement on prices, production, consumption, trade flows, and welfare in each country. Although only the United States and Mexico are signatories to the agreement, Canada was also included because the U.S. minimum price distorts prices across the region. Three tomato categories—field, greenhouse, and cherry and grape—are studied because each has a distinct minimum price. The overall welfare effects are positive for Mexico and Canada, but negative for the United States.

The analytical framework of international trade and industrial organization is used to review and test some new hypotheses about the effect of foreign trade, protection, and foreign direct investment on domestic profitability of U.S. food processing industries. Though several studies have examined the relationship between market structure and performance in food processing [7, 10], they are based on an implicit assumption that the economy is closed. The extensive multinational expansion of American food processors, documented by Horst [8], and their growing dependence on foreign trade suggest that this assumption has become untenable and that the proper identification of industrial structure must account for these foreign factors.

Texas has developed into a major cattle feeding State during the past few years, mainly because of the existing favorable feed/cattle price relationships. These price relationships are the result of the surplus production of both grain sorghum and feeder cattle within the State and the demand for fed beef in Texas, in other Gulf Coast States, and in California.

If all feeder cattle were identical and if all relative prices were constant the feedlot manager would still have an important and difficult decision to make. The decision involves selecting the time at which to replace a pen of cattle on feed with a new pen of feeder cattle such that profit is maximized, over time, to the feeding operation as a whole. Of course, all cattle are far from identical and prices, even relative prices, are never constant. The decision that is not simple with identical cattle and constant prices becomes most difficult with consideration of different types of replacement cattle and varying prices.

Recent investigations have provided mixed assessments of farm firm efficiency. This analysis examined the efficiency of a homogeneous sample of central Illinois grain farms over a six-year period. A best-practice frontier was constructed using the ray-homothetic function, which allowed optimal farm output to vary with factor intensity. Efficiency measures were found to increase with temporal aggregation. The ray-homothetic approach was found to attribute high scale inefficiencies to larger sample farms in cases where the factor shares did not vary appreciably across farms. The findings suggest that policy recommendations regarding farm efficiency must be made with care.