In recent decades there has been a substantial increase in the scale of production and the use of production contracts in the hog sector. This paper explores empirically whether these two phenomena are related by examining whether the use of production contracts has allowed finish hog operations...

Growing farm size has generally been explained by technological advances that have allowed farmers to substitute capital for labor. Another possible factor in explaining recent farm size is the demographic shift: the age distribution of farmers has shifted to the right and older farmers...

The increasing use of production contracts in the hog sector has reduced the number of spot market transactions, raised concerns about price manipulation and helped to spur legislation requiring price reporting by packers. Using data from the 2002 and 2007 Censuses of Agriculture, this study...

U.S. environmental regulations often vary by the size of the operation, with larger operations facing more regulatory stringency. When the size distribution of firms is heavily skewed, regulation size thresholds can reduce transaction costs for regulatory agencies while bringing most production...

Previous research has found that on-farm income variability helps determine off-farm labor supply. However, unobserved heterogeneity of farms or regions may have biased earlier results. In this study, we use an exogenous increase in Federal crop insurance subsidies as a natural experiment to...

Antimicrobial drugs are fed to hogs at sub-therapeutic levels to prevent disease and promote growth. However, there is concern that the presence of antimicrobial drugs in hog feed is a factor promoting the development of antimicrobial drug-resistant bacteria. This study describes the extent to...

A farmer's decision to contract or produce independently depends on the distribution of income under both arrangements, and on attributes associated with both business arrangements. Risk-averse farmers should be willing to pay a risk premium for the reduction in price risk provided by a...

Estimating how production contracts affect farm productivity is difficult because the decision to use a contract is endogenous to other decisions affecting productivity. This study uses the local availability of production contracts as an instrument for whether a farm uses a contract in order to...

Economic theory suggests several possible mechanisms through which direct government farm payments might influence the pattern of structural change in agriculture. This study estimates what effect farm payments have had on farm structure using farm-level panel data from the 1987, 1992, and 1997...