Using the case of chronic wasting disease (CWD) in white-tailed deer, we estimated hunters’ willingness-to-pay (WTP) for testing their game and determined how their perception of disease risk, trust, and confidence in wildlife agency affected hunter participation in ongoing disease surveillance. The average WTP for testing was $23.75 per deer, and it was positively related to trust and confidence in the wildlife agency and the perception of risk about deer populations in the declining area and the pathogen spreading to other areas. These findings imply that implementing active outreach programs can improve hunter participation in user-paid systems for CWD surveillance.

Investing in a new perennial crop variety involves an irreversible commitment of capital and generates an uncertain return stream. As a result, the decision to adopt a new variety includes a significant real option value. Waiting for returns to rise above this real option causes a delay in adoption because of economic hysteresis. This study tests for hysteresis in the adoption of wine grape varieties using a sample of district-level data from the state of California. The empirical results show a significant hysteretic effect in wine grape investment, which might be reduced by activities that smooth earnings over time.

We study the relationship between the off-farm labor decision and the limited-resource farmers' and spouses' off-farm wages, experience, education, and sources of income. We found that farmers' and spouses' off-farm experience and wages are significant factors in explaining the off-farm labor supply decision. Contrary to expectations, farm income variability is not significant in the farmers' and spouses' decision to seek off-farm work. The off-farm labor supply of farmers and their spouses is negatively correlated with income transfers from the government. It was also found that the spouse is a residual supplier of on-farm and off-farm labor.

In this paper we examine the effect of innovation on job creation and job destruction in Spanish manufacturing. Our empirical analysis is based on firm-level longitudinal data from which we have information on employment and innovation activity. The estimation approach consists of a two-step procedure that takes into account the fact that firms endogenously choose positive, negative or zero growth in employment, in which the selection mechanism is an ordered probit. Our results point out the importance of innovation variables on employment growth: innovative firms create more jobs -and destroy fewer- than non-innovative, and the degree of technological effort has a strong positive effect on net employment creation.