Measuring Part-Whole Bias: Some Evidence from Crop Biotechnology

We analyze the non-pecuniary aspects of some crop biotechnologies taken from three farm-level surveys. We focus particularly on the phenomen on of part-whole bias, which is the empirical finding that the sum of the stated part-worths (the value of each nonpecuniary characteristic) is greater than the stated total value of all the non-pecuniary characteristics. We analyze the empirical evidence of part-whole bias in the surveys, while decomposing it to further understand the phenomenon and to rescale the stated values of the non-pecuniary characteristics in the surveys. We find for all three surveys that the degree to which part-worths should be rescaled is about 60 percent.Crop Production/Industries, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies,

KANSAS WHEAT YIELD RISK MEASURES AND AGGREGATION: A META- ANALYSIS APPROACH

A meta-analysis approach to prediction of farm level yield risk from county level yield series is applied to Kansas wheat yields. A nonlinear relationship between county level and farm level yield risk is found, which indicates that yield risk increases at an increasing rate as the number of acres in the risk measure decreases. County level yield variability should be adjusted upward by approximately .1% for each percent difference in county acreage and average farm acreage within the county. The meta-analysis approach is shown to be promising for the prediction of farm level yield risk when farm level information is difficult to obtain.Risk and Uncertainty,

Relative Importance of Environmental Attributes Using Logistic Regression

We investigate the problem of determining the relative importance of attributes in the discrete choice setting. Four alternative methods of extracting the relative importance of attributes are considered. The empirical application involves the development of a risk index system for individual herbicides combining the information on the herbicides' different human and environmental risks. The values of the pesticide risk indices are found to be consistent across the different methods.Environmental Economics and Policy,

How Farmers Bid Into the Conservation Reserve Program: An Empirical Analysis of CRP Offers Data

Replaced with revised version of paper 07/19/11.Land Economics/Use,

The payoffs to agricultural biotechnology: an assessment of the evidence

Transgenic crops are relatively new technologies being adopted rapidly in the United States and in a few other countries. The economic impacts of these technologies have, thus far, been estimated in a piecemeal fashion. The purpose of this study was to collect and characterize the economic evidence available to date, organize it, and determine if any general implications can be drawn from it. The general classes of economic impacts at the farm level are discussed. The types of studies that generate estimates of these benefits are also characterized and categorized in terms of the implications for measuring economic impacts when the set of things held constant in the type of study does not correspond to those that economic theory suggests. The evidence is presented, along with some general implications drawn from the analysis. These implications are: (1) growing transgenic cotton is likely to result in reduced pesticide use in most years and is likely to be profitable in most years in most U.S. states in the Cotton Belt, 2) Bt corn will provide a small but significant yield increase in most years across the U.S. Corn Belt, and in some years and some places the increase will be substantial, and (3) although there is some evidence of a small yield loss in the Roundup Ready soybean varieties, in most years and locations savings in pesticide costs and, possibly, tillage costs will more than offset the lost revenue from the yield discrepancy. There is not yet enough evidence to generalize even these few conclusions to other countries. More farm- level studies in more years and across more locations are required before any additional implications can be drawn. Studies that measure the non-pecuniary benefits and costs of these technologies should be undertaken, as well.Transgenic plants., Technological innovations., Agricultural research Economic aspects., Rate of return., Impact assessment,

TOWARD A MARKETING STRATEGY FOR FRESH WILD BLUEBERRIES IN THE NORTHEAST

Marketing,

INFORMATION QUALITY, TECHNOLOGY DEPRECIATION, AND BT COTTON ADOPTION IN THE SOUTHEAST

In 1996, Bt cotton became one of the first genetically engineered crops to be available commercially. This study focuses on the various sources and quality of information about Bt cotton profitability available to farmers in the Southeast and assesses the relative importance of such information in the farmers' adoption decisions. A model of the individual decision to adopt is developed to incorporate two recent theories of the role of information quality (the "effective information" hypothesis and the "popularity" hypothesis) as well as the effect of current technology depreciation. The data show some support for all three factors as determinants of adoption.Crop Production/Industries,

Video Game Interventions to Improve Cognition in Older Adults

Cognitive abilities decline as part of the normal aging process. Various non-pharmacological interventions are being studied in an effort to ameliorate this cognitive decline. Some of these interventions include computerized cognitive training, such as neuropsychological software (i.e., brain training games) and video games. A previous study in our lab found that older adults who played a brain training game or a video poker game showed similar cognitive gains. The purpose of the present study was to follow the methodological procedures of our previous study to try and determine if the positive effects seen for the brain training program and video poker were due to training effects or merely engagement effects. In doing so, it also sought to determine if a visual art intervention, a relatively unstudied but potentially beneficial intervention, would elicit cognitive gains. Twenty-five individuals (Mage = 86, Meducation = 16.2) were quasi-randomly assigned to an experimental digital art intervention, Art Academy, or an active control condition, Tetris. Participants played their assigned game at least twenty minutes per day for six weeks. Comprehensive neuropsychological assessments were administered before and after the intervention. Outcome measures were in the form of residualized change scores were calculated by regressing the pre-test scores onto the post-test scores to reduce effects of baseline and other non-treatment factors. Compared to the Tetris group, the digital art group improved on aspects of a list-learning test, visual memory test, a scanning and sequencing task, a psychomotor task, a mental rotation task, and a composite score of all cognitive change (Total Change Score). The Tetris group improved on a math fluency task, and both groups improved on the delayed recall of a story memory task. However, the Art Academy group also engaged in the intervention for significantly more minutes of overall play time than the Tetris group, potentially confounding the results. Two groups were created via a median split based on the duration of gameplay: High Gameplay and Low Gameplay. The High Gameplay group showed greater improvement on visual memory, verbal memory, a measure of executive functioning, as well as the Total Change Score. Compared to the active control of the current study (Tetris), the Brain Age group of the previous study showed greater improvement on tasks that are specifically trained (i.e., visual working memory, math fluency) but not untrained tasks (e.g., verbal memory). The study suggests that playing a digital art video game could be a viable intervention to improve cognitive functioning in older adults. However, future research is also needed because the confounding of total gameplay time with group, a metric that other studies rarely report, precludes strong conclusions about the specific training effects