Oregon's nursery and greenhouse industry has ranked the first in the State's agricultural for 18 years. The majority of nursery sales from the Pacific Northwest come from Oregon. Due to data limitations, empirical study of the Oregon nursery industry is rare. The present dissertation consists of three essays that analyze...
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StevenT. Buccola
Oregon’s nursery and greenhouse industry has ranked the first in the
Calls continually are made to provide economic assessments of research program achievements and efficiency. Yet little effort has been given to develop an assessment framework that would focus on the research discovery itself, treating the research manager as a producer and the research technology as a knowledge production function. The...
Marketing cooperatives that operate on a pool basis allocate net returns on the basis of the "economic value" of the raw products each member has delivered. Economic values ideally reflect the raw products' expected contributions to pool net return. In a competitive market, raw product prices would reflect these expected...
Government intervention in food grain markets is a common feature of most LDCs. Inasmuch as liberalizing markets is difficult for some of these governments, researchers have offered suggestions to reduce detrimental affects of intervention. The general advice for pricing policy has been for governments to set prices at c.i.f. or...
The performance of the meat products industry, the largest food processing sector in the U.S. in terms of shipment value, is an important issue. A key indicator of its performance is productivity growth, which results in reduction in the cost of production at given input prices. The present study employs...
The grain milling industry has undergone substantial change during the past several decades in technical as well as industry structure. This study seeks to determine how industry performance, as reflected in productivity growth, has varied since the 1950's. Productivity growth is represented primarily by its dual rate, the percentage reduction...
Agricultural revenues, the product of stochastic prices and yields, lead to markets which are
incomplete, thereby entreating and complicating economic inquiry. The following three essays
explore the incomplete nature of agricultural markets and consider the implications of
incompleteness for a range of policy questions and economic tools.
The first essay,...
The objectives and characteristics of university biotechnology research, including its applicability to such industries as agriculture and food processing, arise from formal and informal linkages among university scientists, public and private-nonprofit funding sources, and industry. In the present study I develop, specify, and estimate a model of the supply and...
Governments in less developed countries have recognized
in recent years the need to liberalize economic policies in
order to increase efficiency in agricultural commodity
markets. In an attempt to help decision makers assess
alternative choices, most policy studies, however, have
focused on the efficiency norm criterion without much
consideration for...
A cost function characterizes a firm's cost-minimizing behavior. It is defined
as a function of the level of outputs produced and the prices of factors which enter
the production process. Econometric estimation of a cost function allows one to test
hypotheses regarding the structure of cost and the structure of...
Increased competition brought about by trade liberalization has raised the stakes
for improving productivity in U.S. and Canadian food processing. A key element of
productivity growth is technological change, which in turn results from R&D investment.
The present study employs an econometric model to assess rates of technological change
and...
World food markets are becoming increasingly interconnected as firms seek to sell their products not only in domestic markets but in international ones as well. Moreover, processed and high-value consumer-oriented products represent an increasing share of total agricultural exports. This growing international market may have implications for the future competitiveness...
The genetic engineering made possible by the discovery of recombinant DNA has played an increasingly important role in agricultural research. The present study employs a knowledge production model to assess the efficacy of, and relationship between, basic and applied research in agricultural biotechnology, allowing for both complementarity and substitutability between...
Searching for suitable measures to solve internal economic problems and
promote economic development, many third world countries have switched from
competitive to government-controlled trade of their agricultural staples. Such
government intervention has failed in many LDCs and researchers have
formulated models and made suggestions to alleviate the resulting distortions.
Modelling...
Long-run food price changes respond to long-run changes in food demand, quasi-fixed and variable production factors, and agricultural productivity. Recent global food-price volatility puts a renewed spotlight on the trends and sources of any agricultural productivity growth. Because food prices’ most critical effects are on human hunger, it is especially...
Technology is a key determinant of comparative advantage among nations. As information technology improves and the nations of the world become economically integrated, concern arises over the dissipation of high-income economies’ technological advantage. The three essays in this dissertation explore the trade and technology relationship, which is essential to economic...
The biorevolution in the 1970’s greatly stimulated investment in life-science
research. The present dissertation is aimed at evaluating the impact of US public
investment on industrial investment in life-science research. The focus is on three major
life-science fields: biology, medicine, and agriculture. A dynamic model of industrial
R&D investment is...
My dissertation concerns two separate issues. The first issue is examined in Essay One, and the second issue is examined in Essays Two and Three.
The first essay develops an economic model of the determination of the rental rate of leased farmland in the United States. Particular attention is placed...
Gene flow is a major evolutionary force and an important factor in the breeding and conservation of forest trees. I studied the applicability of SSR markers for measuring pollen-mediated gene flow (i.e., pollen flow) in Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii [Mirb.] Franco). I developed SSR markers, tested alternative approaches for measuring pollen...