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

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.

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

Consumer Acceptance of Genetically Modified Foods: Traits, Labels and Diverse Information

New experimental economic methods are described and used to assess consumers'�willingness to pay for food products that might be made from new transgenic and intragenic�genetically modified (GM) traits. Participants in auctions are randomly chosen adult consumers�in major US metropolitan areas and not college students. Food labels are kept simple and focus�on key attributes of experimental goods. Diverse private information from the agricultural�biotech industry (largely Monsanto and Syngenta), environmental groups (largely Greenpeace�and Friends of the Earth) and independent third-party information is used to construct the�information treatments. Food labels and information treatments are randomized, which is a�deviation from traditional lab methods. Auctions are best described as sealed bid random n-th�price and not the standard Vickery 2nd price auctions. I show that participants in these�experiments respond to both food labels and information treatments, but no single type of�information is dominant�

Setting Incentives for Collaboration Among Agricultural Scientists: Application of Principal-Agent Theory to Team Work

�The USDA is attempting to shift more research funds into competitive grants involving collaboration across disciplines on large projects. This type of research structure raises a host of information and incentive issues. The objective of this paper is to shed new light on principal-agent problems that are likely to arise in this new funding structure.incentives; Principal-agent model; team research; competitive grants; multi-disciplinary research

The Status of Labor-Saving Mechanization in Fruits and Vegetables

�The objective of this paper is to examine the status of labor-saving mechanization in U.S. fruit and vegetable harvesting. Fruit and vegetable harvest mechanization has several potential advantages: reduced harvest costs, eliminate problems associated with finding good quality harvest labor, permit longer harvesting days, and reduce exposure of harvest to human bacteria.�������� Commercial mechanical harvesters for processed tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, carrots, tart cherries, apples, grapes, peaches, plums and grapes are in the hands of growers. To my surprise, considerable progress has been made on fresh market sweet cherry, apple and berry harvesters, and in the next few years commercial sales of these machines are expected. A negative shock to labor harvest-labor availability or jump in the harvester wage or piece rate could rapidly accelerate adoption of the best mechanical harvesting technologies by growers and processors. �mechanized harvesting; fruits; vegetables; processing; fresh market; labor availability; United States

IMMIGRATION, MEAT PACKING, AND TRADE: IMPLICATIONS FOR IOWA

The paper examines changes in employment and wage patterns, industrial restructuring, and foreign competition that affect opportunities of recent immigrants to the non-metropolitan Midwest, especially to Iowa. The focus is on food and kindred products where meat and poultry packing and processing are major components. Although total employment in this industry declined between 1980 and 1990, a significant increase in employment of Hispanic- and Asian- origin persons occurred in Iowa. As unions weakened and the real wage rate declined sharply during 1980-85 in meat and poultry packing and processing, new job opportunities for recent immigrants became available. These jobs provided full-time year-round work at significantly above the minimum wage and made regular schooling for their children and frequently home ownership possible. Note: Tables are not included in the PDF file--contact the authors for more information.