Agricultural and Resource Economics Commons^™

Who Bears The Economic Costs Of Environmental Regulations?, Don Fullerton, Erich Muehlegger

Don Fullerton

Multiple Pollutants, Co-Benefits, And Suboptimal Environmental Policies, Don Fullerton, Daniel Karney

Don Fullerton

¡El Agua Es Nuestra! Pensar Desde Afuera Del Discurso De ‘Público Vs Privado’ / The Water Is Ours! Thinking From Outside The 'Public Vs. Private' Speech, Julius Figueroa

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Cualquier persona que haya vivido en Cochabamba por más de unos pocos años puede decir que la ciudad tiene una larga historia de problemas de agua. La respuesta del Estado a estos problemas ha sido variada y, a veces, problemática. En el año 1999, el gobierno de Bolivia firmó un contrato con una empresa transnacional llamada Aguas del Tunari en una tentativa de privatizar el suministro municipal del agua de Cochabamba. Después de un drástico aumento en los precios del agua, protestas y manifestaciones estallaron por toda la ciudad de Cochabamba. La gente de Cochabamba finalmente logró presionar al gobierno ...

From Fossil Fuels To Renewables: The Role Of Electricity Storage, Itziar Lazkano, Linda Nostbakken, Martino Pelli

Martino Pelli

Swing Contracts With Dynamic Reserves For Flexible Service Management, Shanshan Ma, Zhaoyu Wang, Leigh Tesfatsion

Economics Working Papers

The increasing penetration of variable energy resources in modern electric power systems requires additional flexibility in ancillary service provision to maintain reliable and efficient grid operations. However, full recognition and appropriate compensation of this flexibility is difficult to ensure within current power market designs due to rigidities in service definitions and requirements. For example, reserve requirements (RRs) are typically set in advance at administratively determined levels. If RRs are too large, wasteful expenditures result; and, if RRs are too small, high real-time costs are incurred for peak generation and/or load curtailment. To address these problems, this paper proposes a ...

Economies Of Scale In Integrated Pest Management In Vegetable And Fruit Production, Franklin Quarcoo, Conrad Bonsi, David Nii O. Tackie, Walter A. Hill, Gertrude Wall, George Hunter

Professional Agricultural Workers Journal

Abstract

Pest management is achieved directly using a variety of tools, including pesticides, and indirectly through a number of agronomic/cultural practices such as irrigation and fertilizer application; collectively these practices function to positively effect general plant health. Healthier plants are more resistant to or tolerant of pests. This study explores the scale differences that impact the pest management significance and suitability of certain agronomic practices. Scale differences were discussed using literature-based information, direct field observations, and anecdotal information on the relative advantages of drip and sprinkler irrigation systems; organic and conventional cultivation of crops; crop rotation versus mono-cropping systems ...

Impact Of Socioeconomic Factors On Florida Consumers' Perceptions On Use Of Chemical In Locally Or Regionally Produced Livestock Products, David Nii O. Tackie, Akua Adu-Gyamfi, Janette R. Bartlett, Bridget J. Perry

Professional Agricultural Workers Journal

Abstract

The use of chemicals in livestock production has been an issue for consumers for several decades. This study, therefore, assessed the impact of socioeconomic factors on Florida consumers’ perceptions on the use of chemicals in locally or regionally produced livestock products. Data were collected from a sample of 404 participants from several Florida counties and were analyzed using descriptive statistics and ordinal logistic analysis. Most of the respondents were of the opinion that using chemicals in locally or regionally produced and sold beef or goat meat was a serious or somewhat serious hazard. The ordinal logistic regression results showed ...

Us Household Demand For Organic Fruit, Erik Nelson, John M. Fitzgerald, Nathan Tefft, John L. Anderson

Economics Department Working Paper Series

We estimate US household monthly elasticities of demand for some of the more popular organic fruits. To our knowledge, this is the first US-wide, multi-year analysis of price and income elasticities for various organic fruits. We calculate elasticities of demand for low-income, middle class, and rich income bracket households using three estimation techniques: two econometric methods and one machine learning method (least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO)). Demand estimates are based on Nielsen scanner data from approximately 60,000 households collected from 2011 to 2013. Generally, we find that own-price conditional and unconditional elasticities of demand for organic fruits ...

Spatial And Seasonal Equilibrium Harvesting In Quota-Managed Multispecies Fisheries, Rajesh Singh, Quinn Weninger

Economics Working Papers

We introduce an ecological-economic model of a spatially and temporally heterogeneous multiple-species fishery. The fishery is regulated with individual transferable fishing quotas that cap landings of individual species during a regulatory cycle, or fishing season. Quotas are neither spatially nor temporally (within-season) delineated and, therefore, fishermen choose where and when to harvest fish. We derive a rational expectation equilibrium for the spatial-temporal harvests, landings, discards, and capital allocations over a representative season. Our results characterize a complex mapping from initial ecological-economic conditions, i.e., stock abundance, prices, technology, and regulations, to outcomes of management interest, e.g., spatial-temporal fishing mortality ...

Spillovers From Behavioral Interventions: Experimental Evidence From Water And Energy Use, Gabriel E. Lade, Katrina Jessoe, Frank Loge, Edward Spang

Gabriel Lade

Political Competition And Rural Welfare: Evidence From Pakistan, Katrina Kosec, David J. Spielman, Hamza Haider, Fatima Zaidi

Katrina Kosec

The Role Of Safety First Risk Preferences In Grain Marketing: A Laboratory Economic Experiment Using A Grain Marketing Simulation Game, Stamatina Kotsakou

Dissertations and Theses in Agricultural Economics

In this study, the Marketing in a New Era (MINE) grain marketing simulation game is used to carry out a context-rich economic experiment to evaluate the role of risk preferences in grain marketing decisions. The model of risk preferences that we consider is an improved Safety First decision rule model proposed by Levy and Levy (2009). We experimentally test if Safety First decision rule describes individuals’ post-harvest marketing decisions. In our experiment, we incorporate real-world features which are usually omitted in marketing studies such as: multiple storage decisions, storage cost, actual price series and multiple contract frequency. MINE plays a ...

Benefits Of Reduced Meat Consumption In The U.S.: Cost-Benefit Analysis Of An Increase In Plant-Based Diets, Rebecca Zahora

Senior Honors Projects

How sustainable is our food system? An investigation of diet choices and their environmental impacts

Food is often thought of as a commodity, when fundamentally it is our nourishment and foundation of life. In the United States, it appears as if we have a functional food system, but in reality what we have is an unsustainable system of industrialized agriculture perpetuated by a disproportionate allocation of resources. Current consumer behavior within our food system is detrimental to future environmental and human well being, ultimately exacerbating the timing and magnitude of global climate change.

With negative impacts of climate change looming ...

Assessing Market Integration Among Aquaculture Products And Production Efficiency In New England's Oyster Aquaculture Industry, Ben Scuderi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Sustainable Ecological Aquaculture Network (SEANET) at the University of Maine is taking an interdisciplinary approach to examine many aspects of marine aquaculture. My role on this team has been to focus on economic concerns related to aquaculture production. The main topics addressed here include price interactions between foreign and domestically produced aquaculture products, as well as production efficiency in New England’s oyster aquaculture industry.

We chose to use catfish as a model species in order to assess the role that the price of foreign aquaculture products have on similar domestic products. There are a several reasons for this ...

Food For Fuel: The Effect Of The Us Biofuel Mandate On Poverty In India, Ujjayant N. Chakravorty, Marie-Hélène Hubert, Beyza Ural Marchand

Ujjayant Chakravorty

The Impact Of Transportation Costs On Spatial Competition Of Grain Buyers: An Iowa Case Study, Miguel Carriquiry, Bruce A. Babcock

Bruce Babcock

Hotelling’s classic model of spatial competition is adapted to estimate the impacts on grain price of the closure of one of three grain buyers on the Mississippi River in the vicinity of Scott County, Iowa. The customers of the buyer who is closing (River Gulf Grain Company) in Davenport, Iowa, are assumed to deliver their grain to a buyer in either Buffalo, Iowa, to the south or to a buyer in Clinton, Iowa, to the north. Calibration of Hotelling’s framework to this situation leads to an estimated decline in grain bids of 1.5¢ per bushel for the ...

Estimating The Value Of Guaranteed Rail Service, Gregory R. Pautsch, Bruce A. Babcock, C. Phillip Baumel

Bruce Babcock

The purpose of this research is to develop a framework to estimate the value of guaranteed rail service to grain shippers. The analysis consists of estimating density functions for the days waiting for conventional tariff service. A shipper loss function for waiting for rail service was also estimated. Three qualitative results were established. First, the value of guaranteed rail service increases as the quality of guaranteed service rises. Second, the value of guaranteed rail service increases as conventional tariff service becomes less reliable. Finally, when grain is stored on the ground, the value of guaranteed rail service increases.

Economies Of Size, Tax Reform And Profitability Of Alternative Midwestern Feedlot Systems, Mark R. Weimar, Arne Hallam, Larry D. Trede

Arne Hallam

The Tax Reform Act of 1986 may have substantial impacts on cattle feeding operations in the Midwest. Changes in the tax laws may encourage different investment patterns in feedlots as to size, type of facility, feeding programs, and age of animal fed. Cost and returns are computed for a variety of feeding systems under the new and old tax laws.Substantial economies of size were found under both tax laws, bu they were more extreme under the new tax system.

Quota Flexibility In Multi-Species Fisheries, Rajesh Singh, Quinn Weninger

Economics Working Papers

We evaluate management implications of cross-species flexibility in a multiple-species individual fishing quota regulation. We derive fishermen’s privately optimal harvesting and discarding choices under a joint-in-inputs, costly-targeting technology and the complex mapping between quotas set by the regulator and harvest and discard outcomes. Flexibility can reduce fishery rent due to reduced control of harvest outcomes. Empirical evidence from the Gulf of Mexico commercial reef fish fishery is presented to test model predictions. We find no evidence that flexibility reduced discards caused by random quota overages. Discarding in the data is attributed to a particularly small quota and a much ...

Spatial And Temporal Intricacies Of Natural Resource Use: Studies In Water, Forests, And Hydrocarbons, Dadhi Adhikari

Economics ETDs

This dissertation examines spatial and temporal impacts of natural resource use. The second chapter integrates hydrological and economic systems to examine the impact of drought on these two systems and explores the spatial impact of policies aimed to mitigate the drought impact. The systems dynamics model developed for this chapter simultaneously considers the physical hydrology in the Middle Rio Grande water basin in New Mexico, the engineered water management system, and a behavioral model of residential water demand for three cities: Albuquerque, Rio Rancho, and Santa Fe, New Mexico. The simulation results showed that droughts that occur in later periods ...