Dissertations

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Browsing Dissertations by Discipline "Agricultural and Resource Economics"

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    Characteristics, Transaction Costs, and Adoption of Modern Varieties in Honduras (Draft)
    (2003-01-20) Hintze, Luis Hernando; Dr. Daniel Hallstrom, Committee Member; Dr. Daniel Phaneuf, Committee Member; Dr. Mitch Renkow, Committee Co-Chair; Dr. Gerald Carlson, Committee Co-Chair
    This dissertation researches the factors contributing to the low levels of adoption of improved maize varieties and the choice of maize varieties among small farmers in Honduras. An agricultural household model is developed. It explicitly incorporates two explanations from the adoption literature that have not yet been tested simultaneously: (i) consumption and production characteristics of different varieties as perceived by farmers, and (ii) transaction costs and access to markets. The empirical analysis also considered additional variables that have been used by previous adoption studies related to household characteristics, human and financial capital, and environmental characteristics. To test the model, information was collected in a survey of 167 farmers located across 34 villages in two distinctly different agro-ecological zones in Honduras. From non-parametric analysis of the information regarding farmers' perception of maize characteristics, four conclusions were drawn: (i) Farmers perceive differences among varieties for some of the characteristics they consider to be important; (ii) varieties that are widely used tend to be regarded as having good performance with respect to the most important characteristics; (iii) sometimes, varieties that are widely used are outperformed by other varieties for some of the characteristics evaluated. In those cases, however, the ratings obtained by the more popular varieties indicate that they have an acceptable performance; (iv) there are important differences in how farmers in the two regions studied perceive the different varieties available to them. The empirical analyses of the determinants of household variety choice and adoption used qualitative choice models and tested the degree to which varietal characteristics contributed to adoption decisions, controlling for an array of household socioeconomic characteristics and proxy measures of village-specific marketing costs and household-specific transaction costs. Results indicate that in both regions yield was the only characteristic that consistently had a significant impact on varietal choice. On the other hand, consumption characteristics appear to play little if any role in varietal choice in either area. Transaction costs variables, particularly the quality of roads connecting villages to markets are also significant in explaining variety choice.
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    The Economic Effects of Federal Peanut Policy: The 1996 FAIR Act, the 2001 Farm Security Act, and the Federal Crop Insurance Program
    (2002-08-01) Chvosta, Jan; Walter N. Thurman, Committee Chair; Blake A. Brown, Committee Member; Matthew T. Holt, Committee Member; Marc G. Genton, Committee Member
    Government programs that restrict production and increase prices to particular groups of producers have a long history in the United States. The purpose of this research is to analyze the implications of such a program for peanuts in three independent essays. The first essay focuses on the development of a model of the effects of cross-county transfers on peanut quota after the 1996 farm bill. Using a spatial linear regression model, the hypothesis that the lifting of transfer restrictions tends to equilibrate lease rates across counties is tested. The results indicate that, after the 1996 bill, peanut quota moved out of counties that under produce their quota to overproducing counties, indirectly indicating a tendency for lease rates to equalize. The second essay studies the most recent changes to the peanut program, enacted by the U.S. Congress in 2002, and reviews important events that led to these changes. Several models are developed that analyze the costs and benefits of the revised program in domestic and foreign markets. It is concluded that farmers in most peanut producing states will incur losses due to the peanut program changes, with the exception of Texas and Florida. The impact of the transformation on the world price of edible peanuts is analyzed and shown to be theoretically ambiguous-- the world price could either increase or decrease depending on demand and supply elasticities. The essay explores numerically the influence of the relevant elasticities. The third essay reviews the U.S. federal crop insurance program and investigates its interaction with the peanut program. A model of a risk neutral profit maximizing farmer is developed and comparative static results are derived. The results show that in equilibrium peanut quota lease rates do not represent the full difference between the support price and world price and are affected by the cost of crop insurance.