I test empirically the relationship between farmers� perceptions of the nonpecuniary benefits from farming with a variety of field behaviors such as disinvestment, production, diversification, and off-farm labor market participation. Results suggest that nonpecuniary benefits have an important influence on a wide range of farmer activities. While costs and returns are clearly important, I …

This research examines consumer preference and compares their willingness-to-pay for a host of value-added attributes of processed blackberry jam, and focuses on various organic and local production location designations. Instead of being treated as a binary attribute, three levels of USDA organic are considered: 100% organic, at least 95% organic, and made with organic ingredients (at least 7…

The dimensions that define a food product have expanded rapidly to include characteristics of the production process, marketing arrangements, and implications that production and consumption of the product have for the environment. Some market intermediaries have responded by requiring that their suppliers abide by restrictive production practices. We examine the economic effects of such restr…

This article analyzes the efficiency of the intra-household allocation of female and male labor inputs in agricultural production. In a collective household model, spouses� optimal on-farm labor supply is such that the marginal rate of technical substitution between male and female labor is equated over different crops. Using the Uganda National Household Survey 2005/06, we test whether th…

We propose a new three-step model-selection framework for size distributions in empirical data. It generalizes a recent frequentist plausibility-of-fit analysis (step 1) and combines it with a relative ranking based on the Bayesian Akaike information criterion (step 2). We enhance these statistical criteria with the additional criterion of microfoundation (step 3), which is to select the size …

In many Sub-Saharan African countries, farmers typically have a choice between selling their products to traders who travel between villages and markets and transporting their products to the nearest market themselves. Because of communities� remoteness and poor communications with marketplaces, farmers� uncertainty about market prices is usually high. Traders may take advantage of fa…

A major econometric issue in estimating production parameters and technical efficiency is the possibility that some forces influencing production are only observed by the firm and not by the econometrician. Not only can this misspecification lead to a biased inference on the output elasticity of inputs, but it also provides a faulty measure of technical efficiency. We extend the Levinsohn and P…

The paper estimates the impacts of risk-reducing government programs on the use of conservation tillage (no-till and other conservation tillage) practices in agriculture. Conservation tillage can be used to reduce production risk from weather shocks. However, subsidized crop insurance and disaster payments also reduce risk through financial assistance. The paper examines the extent to which r…

The federal crop insurance program has been a major fixture of U.S. agricultural policy since the 1930s, and continues to grow in size and importance. Indeed, it now represents the most prominent farm policy instrument, accounting for more government spending than any other farm commodity program. The 2014 Farm Bill further expanded the crop insurance program and introduced a number of new cou…

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