Developments in the Organization and Finance of Public Agricultural Research in the United States, 1988-1999

This paper describes major external changes to the U.S. public agricultural research system over 1988-1999; describes the reactions of the public agricultural research system to the external changes, specifying the innovations that have occurred over the last decade; and draws conclusions about the present and future performance of the U.S. research system. The decade of the 1990s brought slow growth to public agricultural research funding. CSREES tried to stimulate greater interests in competitive grant programs. The states have generally resisted this move. A major asymmetry exists in the sharing of transactions costs associated with external peer-reviewed competitive grant programs. This is especially true when the average grant size is small and the average award rate is low.

Investing in People for the 21st Century

The paper draws upon the work of T.W. Schultz to show that human capital theory and labor market adjustments have important implications for investing in people for the 21st Century.human capital; education; twenty-first century; global labor markets

Does Information Change Behavior?

This paper reviews and synthesizes the theory of information economics and empirical evidence on how information changes the behavior of consumers, households and firms. I show that consumers respond to new information in food experiments but perhaps not in retirement account management. Some seeming perverse consumer/investor decision making may be a result of a complex decision with a low expected payoff.moral hazard; information economics; consumer behavior; behavioral economics; adverse selection

Demand for Farm Labor in the Coastal Fruit and Salad Bowl States Relative to Midland States: Four Decades of Experience

This paper provides an updated assessment of the changing demand for farm labor, including its components and relative use, as reflected in the capital-labor ratios for California and Florida, which are major coastal producers of fresh fruits and vegetables, and of Iowa and Texas, which are two major midland agricultural states. Iowa is known for the production of the field crops of corn and soybeans. Texas is a large state with diverse climates and agriculture, which produces wheat and cotton and significant fresh fruit and vegetables. In order to get a good overview of long-term trends, much of our analysis spans more than four decades; i.e., we take this long-term perspective so as to be able to see the “forest” and not be obscured by all of the “trees” that are in noise data. In particular, this paper spans fifteen additional years of data relative to the data in my paper of one year ago (Huffman 2006)—extending the data forward over 2000 to 2004, which is the most recent data available from the USDA-ERS, and also extending backwards by an additional decade, 1960-1969. Our ability to summarize and analyze trends in US farm labor by state have depended heavily upon data collected by the USDA, but the USDA has withdrawn its funding for its data on self-employed and unpaid family labor by state.  Without this information, we will be missing one of the important components of the total farm labor and farm input picture.

Economics of Intellectual Property Rights in Plant Materials

This paper presents an economic perspective on intellectual property in plant materials, including its value, and summary information on the U.S. seed industry. It first considers intellectual property rights--types, economic incentives that they bestow, and uses across developed and developing countries. Second, it considers the U.S. seed industry--characteristics for major crops, optimal pricing of a superior variety, and relative size of public and private research expenditures. Some conclusions and implications are presented in the final section.Intellectual property rights; value of innovations; plants; seed industry

Marketizing U.S. Production in the Post-War Era: Implications for Estimating CPI Bias and Real Income from a Complete-Household-Demand System

This paper applies production theory to define a new set of inputs for U.S. households for the post-war II period, tests the new inputs to see if they support a complete household-demand system, and reports a new social cost-of-living index. The data support a demand system with nine major input categories and yield plausible price, income, and translating-variable effects. Womencomplete-demand system; household production; social cost of living index; post-war II

Marketizing U.S. Production in the Post-War Era: Implications for Estimating CPI Bias and Real Income from a Complete-Household-Demand System

This paper applies production theory to define a new set of inputs for U.S. households for the post-war II period, tests the new inputs to see if they support a complete household-demand system, and reports a new social cost-of-living index. The data support a demand system with nine major input categories and yield plausible price, income, and translating-variable effects. Women’s and men’s housework are complements, but other input categories are substitutes for women’s housework. Some changes in the demand are associated with household technology and demographics. My social cost-of-living index rises at an approximately 1.4 percent per year slower over the post-war era than the implicit price deflator

Reducing class size misses mark

School quality is very much on the minds of Iowans and many others. Real (constant-dollar) spending per pupil in Iowa public K-12 schools has increased steadily since 1960 up to 1992-93 when it flattened out. Per-pupil real expenditures are an eye-popping 2.8 times larger than in 1960, and the pupil-teacher ratio has declined about 34 percent -- mostly between 1970 and 1990

Human Capital, Education, and Agriculture

Education is widely recognized as the most important form of human capital, and health as the second most important form. The primary focus is on schooling where private and social real rates of return remain high in low and middle income countries for elementary and secondary schooling. The paper reviews broad effects of education in agriculture, and examines some of the prospects and potential for thefuture. Conclusions include: (i) schooling cannot be viewed as unconditionally productive in agriculture. It s impact is conditioned by the price and technology environment and options for off-farm work and migration, (ii) With rapid advances and fall prices of communication and information technologies, farm people of the future will need strong basic schooling to adopt and usethese technologies so as to participate successfully in the new global information system of the 21 century. The structure of agriculture seems likely to change dramatically during the first 25 years, and a new set of adjustments for farm families can be expected

Effects of Local Economic Conditions On Poverty Status of U.S. Rural Husband-Wife Households

In the mid-1960s, poverty in the United States became a major national issue (Danziger and Weinberg 1986). An official definition was adopted and new programs were initiated to eradicate poverty. According to official sources the poverty rate fell from 22.2 percent in 1960 to 12.1 percent in 1969; the rate started rising in 1979.-\u27\u27 The poverty rate among the nonmetropolitan population is higher than for the metropopulation- (USDA 1987). Although differences between the two rates narrowed during 1967-79, it widened again during 1979-85. The poverty rate (ignoring in-kind transfers) of the nonmetro-population did not start to decline again until after 198