PLANTING DECISIONS AND UNCERTAIN CONSUMER ACCEPTANCE OF GENETICALLY MODIFIED CROP VARIETIES

There exists much uncertainty about consumer attitudes towards genetically modified foods. If it happens that sufficient (insufficient) acres are planted under non-modified seed to meet post-harvest demand, then a price premium will not (will) emerge for the non-modified varieties. A non-linearity originates in the fact that a price premium may be supported. This non-linearity interacts with the extent of demand uncertainty to determine equilibrium varietal plantings and the probability that post-harvest varietal prices will differ. Also, as planting approaches signals will be received by growers about the nature of demand they will be planting into. We show how the non-linearity affects the order on the types of signals that risk-neutral growers will prefer to receive.Consumer/Household Economics, Crop Production/Industries,

LOCATION, LAND QUALITY, AND RENTAL VOLATILITY

It appears to be widely believed that returns on low quality land are more variable than on high quality land. Using Ricardian rent as the measure of returns and sensitivity to output price as the measure of volatility, we investigate this null hypothesis for three different measures of quality. These are proximity to market, output productivity, and cost efficiency. In all cases, we identify precise conditions on the production technology such that rental volatility varies in a monotone manner with land quality. A method of econometric investigation of the relationship between rental volatility and land quality is developed and applied to Iowa cash rents data collected during 1994-2000. Our preliminary findings provide partial empirical support for the null hypothesis of an inverse relationship between quality and rental volatility with respect to commodity prices.Land Economics/Use,

Taste Asymmetries and Trade Patterns

We study trade patterns in a pure exchange economy where preferences are symmetric up to taste intensity parameters. In a 2-person, 2-good endowment economy, then all endowments in a particular Edgeworth box rectangle require trading out of that rectangle. Under strictly quasi-concave preferences, trade will occur away from a larger area of initial endowments. The identified area is larger still when preferences are homothetic and identical up to taste intensity parameters. Implications for the factor price equalization theorem are explored.

Buying Ecological Services: Fragmented Reserves, Core and Periphery National Park Structure, and the Agricultural Extensification Debate

�Growing demand for cropland products has placed intense pressure on the abilityof land resources to support nature, straining public budgets to purchase environmental goods.Fixing overall agricultural output, two environmental policy options are whether to a) promotemore agricultural extensification and nature friendly farming practices or b) produce intensivelyon some land and leave the rest wild. Microeconomic models of the topic have not accounted forwidely recognized spatial externalities regarding fragmented reserves. This article does so, usingWirtinger’s inequality to also identify a third policy possibility. This is that ecological servicescan follow a smoothly varying spatial path chararacterized by harmonic functions. We use theresults to rationalize the core and periphery National Park structure put in place around theworld, i.e., versions of our third policy possibility have been implemented.Environmental policy; Land use; National Park management; Spatial externalities; Wirtinger’s inequality

Statistical Moments Analysis of Production and Profits in Multi-Product Cournot Oligopoly

Our context involves N firms producing M products at constant marginal costs, and behaving as Cournot oligopolists. When preferences are quasi-linear, we study the relationships between second moments of unit costs and second moments of firm-level production. Larger variance in unit costs of a product increases own output variance and variance of any other output. We also investigate how second moments of unit costs affect the first and second moments of profit across firms. Larger variance in unit costs can reduce profit variance, even for a single product oligopoly.