Do Pigs Need Wings? Introductory Thoughts on Law Reviews, Errors, and the Coase Theorem

Ever since shepherd children stumbled upon the Dead Sea Scrolls, a small group of scholars controlled access to these writings. These scholars painstakingly edited and published so far about half the historic texts. Scholars not numbered among the select few complained of the arrogance implicit in limiting access to the original materials. Now the critics have their chance. In late 1991 the Biblical Archaeology Society published a facsimile edition of the previously unpublished scrolls. Professor Robert H. Eisenman, coeditor of the new edition, boasted that this was \u27the last stage in breaking the monopoly\u27 of authorized editors over the scroll texts. One of those authorized editors responded that it would be \u27presumably immoral and unethical\u27 for scholars to work with the newly released texts until he and his colleagues had translated them. He forecast shoddy research. Professor Eisenman was unconcerned: Now we can let free competition determine what the best scholarship is

Coase Defends Coase: Why Lawyers Listen and Economists Do Not

A Review of The Firm The Market and The Law by Ronald Coas

B831: The Role of Human Capital in the Adoption of Conservation Tillage: The Case of Aroostook County, Maine, Potato Farmers

Given the continuing potential loss from soil erosion and the significant effort put forth recently to alleviate the problem in Aroostook County, it is important to study ways to improve the success rate of that effort. One way to improve the soil loss problem is for farmers to adopt conservation tillage practices for those areas where there are significant benefits from doing so. The objective of this study is to identify the characteristics important in the adoption decisions of Aroostook County farmers. The Maine results will be compared with results from a study in Iowa to identify any differences in the decisionmaking process in Maine relative to Iowa.https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/aes_bulletin/1021/thumbnail.jp

Estimating the Potential Value of Variable Rate Nitrogen Applications: A Comparison of Spatial Econometric and Geostatistical Models

Site-specific crop response functions (SSCRFs) are useful for estimating the value of variable rate nitrogen applications (VRA), but appropriate statistical models are necessary. Problems estimating SSCRFs using experimental field data include region, spatial, treatment, and strip dependent heteroskedasticity and correlation. We develop a spatial autoregressive error (SARE) model for dealing with these problems and compare results with previous analysis based on a geostatistical (GEO) model. VRA value estimates for the two models differ notably for 1995 data from Southern Minnesota. Furthermore, findings show that the results of a comparison of model performance are location specific.geostatistics, precision agriculture, site-specific crop response functions, spatial autoregressive error, variable rate nitrogen application, Crop Production/Industries,

Rural Financial Markets in Developing Countries

This review examines portions of the vast literature on rural financial markets and household behavior in the face of risk and uncertainty. We place particular emphasis on studying the important role of financial intermediaries, competition and regulation in shaping the changing structure and organization of rural markets, rather than on household strategies and bilateral contracting. Our goal is to provide a framework within which the evolution of financial intermediation in rural economies can be understood.Rural Finance, Financial Intermediation, Agricultural Credit