J. Bruce Bullock

Can Entrepreneurship Be Taught

Is entrepreneurship an innate ability or an acquired skill? Can entrepreneurship acumen be achieved and enhanced through education and training, or are certain people “born” to be entrepreneurs or to act entrepreneurially? Economists and management theorists give widely divergent answers to these questions. This paper reviews the major approaches to teaching entrepreneurship, primarily at the undergraduate level, and relates them to economic theories of entrepreneurship. Surprisingly, we find little connection between the leading approaches to entrepreneurship education and economists’ understanding of the entrepreneurial function. We assess likely explanations for the lack of contact between these two groups of scholars and suggest possible improvements.

Social Costs Caused by Errors in Agricultural Production Forecasts

U.S. agriculture. The accuracy of SRS forecasts would appear to be a valid area of concern. Increased accuracy of SRS estimates would require additional expenditures. Several questions need to be answered prior to committing funds for this purpose. What is the nature and magnitude of social costs generated by SRS forecast errors? Do all forecast errors generate social costs? Is the magnitude of these social costs dependent on the size of the forecast error?

An Application of Statistical Decision Theory to Cattle Feedlot Marketing

The commercial cattle feeder is continually faced with the decision of whether to market a particular lot of cattle at their current weight or to continue feeding them. Uncertainty about future price changes is an important factor in this decision. The study uses statistical decision theory to combine a priori information about the historical pattern of month-to-month price changes with information provided by a price forecasting model to develop monthly feed or sell decision criteria. These criteria specify the minimum predicted price change required to generate positive expected returns from feeding an additional 30 days.

INTERREGIONAL COMPETITION IN THE U.S. SWINE-PORK INDUSTRY: AN ANALYSIS OF OKLAHOMA'S AND THE SOUTHERN STATES' EXPANSION POTENTIAL

During the past few years, considerable interest has been expressed by swine producers, pork packers, and processors concerning the potential for expanding Oklahomas swine-pork industry, even though the states largest hog slaughtering facility has ceased operation. The study described herein was undertaken to satisfy these interests. The general objective was to identify the conditions necessary for and the limits to the expansion of Oklahomas swine-pork industry. Due to the national scope of the model, similar information concerning other regions is also made available. The objective was addressed through a series of sub-objectives that dealt with the determination of expansion potential under various exogenous conditions.

Correction of Measurement Error in Monthly USDA Pig Crop: Generating Alternative Data Series

The imputed pig death loss contained in the reported monthly U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) pig crop data over the December 1995–June 2006 period ranged from 24.93% to 12.75%. Clearly, there are substantial measurement errors in the USDA monthly pig crop data. In this paper, we present alternative monthly U.S. pig crop data using the biological production process, which is compatible with prior knowledge of the U.S. hog industry. Alternative pig crop data are applied to a slaughter hog model and tested comparatively to USDA pig crop. Test results reject the validity of USDA pig crop data in favor of the alternative data.

Analysis of Milk Production Costs Using Cross-Section Data: The Problem of Converting Observed Quantities of Milk to a Standard Butterfat Content

A NALYSIS of milk production costsusing crosssection data is complicated by the need to convert observed quantities of milk to a standard butterfat content. This need arises because the market price per hundredweight of milk is a function of its butterfat content. In other words, the market treats milks of different butterfat levels as if they are different products. Meaningful analysis of costs can be developed only for standardized units. Calculation of average production costs per hundredweight of milk using unadjusted quantities is not unlike estimating the average cost of producing a unit of automobiles and horses. This problem has been widely recognized by economists. Few, if any, analyses have failed to convert observed quantities to standard units. The fat corrected milk (FCM) procedure developed by Gaines [2] is widely used by economists for this purpose. This procedure, however, compounds the problem it is intended to solve and introduces a bias into the cost analysis. The purpose of this note is to demonstrate the nature of this bias and to suggest a more appropriate standardization procedure for use in economic analysis. The butterfat level selected as the base is