This paper investigates the presence of career incentives in arm's-length contracts between wine-grape farmers and wineries in Chile. We observe explicit incentives in pay-for-performance provisions that depend on measurable characteristics of grape quality, and we test for the presence of...

We introduce a fast and inexpensive method to rule out potential barriers to adopting a technology. We use this method to asses the role of exogeneous contract enforcement as a barrier to market for Kenya's French Bean export market. We survey 240 farmers in Kirinyaga County, Kenya who were...

Many markets include communication forums (e.g. Angie's List for services, Yelp for restaurants) to facilitate trading between buyers and sellers. Some market-makers go beyond creating forums and make investments to improve the quality of communication platforms, such as by recruiting...

USDA conducts mandatory census survey every 5 year. According to the report the total amount of farms drops to 1,717,898 in 2012, which is 23.34% less then that in 1982. The number of farm exits varies from 906,100 to 652,597 during the 30 years. What are the factors influencing farm exit rates...

Farmer cooperatives are playing an increasingly crucial role in the current reform of the agricultural sector in China. Two features of these organizations have stood out amidst the undergoing, rapid development. One is the highly concentrated decision-making structure, while the other being the...

Originating from a bold idea, Organic Valley currently reigns as the largest organic cooperative in North America. In 1988, from the non-glaciated, hilly part of Southwestern Wisconsin, seven progressive rural entrepreneurs started a courageous and visionary journey. The founders’ original...

Selected Poster for AAEA 2014 annual meetings

The objective of this research is to evaluate increasing interaction between the private Exchange spot cheese market and Federal Milk Marketing Orders pricing system during three milk pricing regimes: Minnesota-Wisconsin price series (1960s-1995), Basic Formula Price (1995-1999) and Multiple...