The United States is a global leader in agricultural productivity. Much of its productivity growth can be attributed to public investments in agricultural research and development, starting in the 19th century and continuing until today. Past studies have shown high returns to agricultural research investments, but publicly funded agricultural research...
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Steve Buccola, Committee Member, representing the Department of Applied Economics
The present study employs a normalized restricted quadratic profit function approach to estimate lumber and plywood supply and Marshallian factor demand elasticities for four region-product combinations in Oregon for the period 1970-2010. The four log demand functions will be employed as the "demand side" of the log market model of...
The elasticity of excess demand held by foreign buyers of United States agricultural products is critical for understanding the impacts of changes in farm policy and is a parameter that is much debated. The objective of my study is to estimate this parameter for major U.S. export crops, including wheat,...
In this dissertation, we study two risk models. First, we consider the dual risk process which models the surplus of a company that incurs expenses at a constant rate and earns random positive gains at random times. When the surplus is invested in a risky asset following a geometric Brownian...
Firms' participation in exporting or foreign direct investment is an extremely rare behavior: only 4 percent of over 5.5 million U.S. firms were exporters in 2000. Exporters are generally larger (e.g. output and employment) and more productive than firms serving only domestic markets. Such heterogeneity within a narrowly defined industry...
Hypothesis tests are developed for the exertion of
market power by the Japanese government in the world and
domestic wheat markets. The results indicate that the
Japanese government is pursuing a more restrictive import
policy for wheat than would be indicated by an optimal
tariff strategy. Results also indicate that...
Development research and policy aim to improve household welfare by improving access to assets and economic opportunities (Besley & Burgess 2000; Deininger et al. 2003). In rural and agrarian contexts, these goals may be achieved by well-functioning markets for outputs, inputs, off-farm work, and credit. The status of these markets...
The three essays in this dissertation progressively answer the following questions: (a) How important are constraints? (b) Who benefits from removing constraints? (c) When does a constraint for a single market predominantly affect closely related markets? These questions are applied in the context of time, weather, and minimum wage constraints,...
Two econometric models were developed to forecast consumption,
production, and price of hardwood lumber, and removals and price
of hardwood sawlog stumpage. Four eastern U.S. regions were represented
in the models. Hardwood lumber consumption by manufacturing,
shipping, residential construction, and nonresidential construction
industries was recognized. Hardwood sawlog stumpage removals from...
Why do rural households leave for urban places? And how does this
decision affect their economic well-being? Rural places in the United States have higher poverty and unemployment rates and lower levels of educational attainment relative to urban places. Does leaving a rural place for a city offer a pathway...