Replaced with revised version of paper 07/02/10.

Despite of the important role international migration fills in the United States’ labor-intensive agricultural sector, few studies have addressed the individual characteristics and circumstances surrounding entry and exit by farm laborers. With increasing public attention on international...

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...

This research examines the effect of risk and time preferences on forest management responses to forest tenure land reforms in Fujian, China that began in 2002. The different extent of the reform and its different timing across regions provide a natural experiment to test how time and risk...

2010 AAEA Presidential Address; forthcoming in January 2011 AJAE in shortened version.

Forthcoming in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics.

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...

We develop a theoretical model using migration and trade theory to examine the effects of domestic and border enforcement policies on unauthorized workers and the U.S. agricultural sector. The theoretical results show that heightened immigration policies increase the illegal farm wage rate, and...

This paper asks how NAFTA affected income distribution within Mexico considering changes in internal migration. Trade liberalization should theoretically increase the income of low-skilled workers in low-skilled labor-abundant developing countries. Thus, by increasing the wages of poorer...