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on Agricultural Economics |
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Issue of 2005‒07‒18
three papers chosen by |
| By: | Duffy, Michael; Holste, Ann |
| Abstract: | This paper estimates the average return to Iowa farmland is approximately 3.9 percent. For the farmer with owned land, the returns are approximately five percent using an average price scenario. Government programs are estimated to have significant impacts on Iowa farmland values. |
| Date: | 2005–07–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:isu:genres:12396&r=agr |
| By: | Junsoo Lee; John A. List; Mark Strazicich |
| Abstract: | In this paper we examine temporal properties of eleven natural resource real price series from 1870-1990 by employing a Lagrangian Multiplier unit root test that allows for two endogenously determined structural breaks with and without a quadratic trend. Contrary to previous research, we find evidence against the unit root hypothesis for all price series. Our findings support characterizing natural resource prices as stationary around deterministic trends with structural breaks. This result is important in both a positive and normative sense. For example, without an appropriate understanding of the dynamics of a time series, empirical verification of theories, forecasting, and proper inference are potentially fruitless. More generally, we show that both pre-testing for unit roots with breaks and allowing for breaks in the forecast model can improve forecast accuracy. |
| JEL: | Q31 C12 C53 |
| Date: | 2005–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:11487&r=agr |
| By: | Danilo Camargo Igliori (Department of Land Economy, University of Cambridge, UK) |
| Abstract: | The determinants of technical efficiency in agriculture and cattle ranching are closely related with the debate involving the conservation-development trade-off in the Brazilian Amazon. Concerned with balancing development and environmental conservation, policy makers and academics have emphasized the importance of choosing ways of selecting areas where land use restrictions would be established. In order to understand the relationship between spatial patterns of deforestation and the associated distribution and characteristics of economic activity, issues regarding technical efficiency are clearly important. This paper aims to identify the socio-economic and environmental determinants of technical efficiency in agriculture and cattle ranching in the Brazilian Amazon emphasizing their relationship with spatial processes of deforestation and development. The study is structured in two parts. The first part is concerned with measuring technical efficiency for agriculture and cattle ranching in each geographical unit focusing on the production relationship between inputs and outputs. The second one focuses on the variation in the efficiency measure explained by exogenous factors and includes the spatial analysis. We adopt the model proposed by Battese and Coelli (1995) where the production function and the exogenous effects influencing technical efficiency are estimated simultaneously. |
| Keywords: | stochastic frontier, technical efficiency, spatial analysis, Brazilian Amazon |
| Date: | 2005–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lnd:wpaper:092005&r=agr |