Philip R. Wandschneider

Will Farmers Trade Profits for Stewardship? Heterogeneous Motivations for Farm Practice Selection

We investigate the trade-off agricultural producers face between profits and stewardly activities when selecting farm practices. Instead of the profit-maximization framework, we model producer behavior in an expanded utility framework, built on production technology, and including two utility components: self and social interests. The framework introduces inherent heterogeneity and social/environmental motivations into farmer behavior. Based on this model, we hypothesize that there are farmers that are willing to forego some profit to engage in stewardly farm practices. With an empirical study, we provide evidence that some farmers are willing to make this sacrifice. Results are consistent with the multi-utility hypothesis. (JEL Q12, Q24)

Economic implications of a virus prevention program in deciduous tree fruits in the US

Abstract Viral diseases in fruit trees present a potential danger that could injure the fruit industry, the planting stock industry (nurseries), and consumers in the United States and abroad. Currently, the US has a virus protection program (VPP) that serves to minimize the spread of viral diseases. This paper reports research estimating the economic consequences of the loss of the program on nurseries, growers and consumers. The potential economic losses are a measure of the value of the existing program. The paper focuses on apples, sweet cherries, and Clingstone peaches. The effects of a loss of a VPP on nurseries would include direct and indirect losses from viral diseases in the form of lower quantity and quality of planting stocks. Fruit growers would be affected by reduced plant growth and fruit yield. Consumers would be affected by higher prices and reduced quantity of fruit. We measured benefits of the virus prevention program as changes in consumer and producer surpluses. Empirical estimates were made using the method of avoided losses. Benefit estimates to three economic sectors—nurseries (avoided change in producer surplus), producers (avoided change in consumer and producer surpluses), and consumers (avoided change in consumer surplus)—were calculated. Total benefits for all three sectors were approximately

HOW DO FARMERS WHO ADOPT MULTIPLE CONSERVATION PRACTICES DIFFER FROM THEIR NEIGHBORS

227.4 million a year, or more than 420 times the cost of the program. Our analysis utilizes a method that might be used to evaluate other programs that prevent the introduction of plant diseases.

Using Contingent Valuation to Measure User and Nonuser Benefits: An Application to Public Transit

This study analyses three key conservation practices adoption behavior for 266 farmers in eastern Washington. Results revealed (1) that multiple practice adopters contrast more sharply with non-adopters than do adopters of a single practice, and (2) single practice adopters differ more from zero practice adopters than from other farmers.

Agent Heterogeneity in Adoption of Anaerobic Digestion Technology: Integrating Economic, Diffusion, and Behavioral Innovation Theories

The contingent valuation method (CVM) was used to measure the value of a community service, rural transit, that has both user and nonuser values. Traditional focus groups and a CVM questionnaire provide estimates of willingness to pay and willingness to accept. Tobit analysis was used to test relationships among the variables. Income was not related to the amount of perceived benefit, but the alternative desire to provide transit for others was statistically significant. Ranges for possible total benefits, user and nonuser, are provided for the test transit systems. Proper aggregation of benefits to the population was found to be critical.

Permanent Housing for Seasonal Workers? A Generalized Peak Load Investment Model for Farm Worker Housing

Anaerobic digestion technology addresses environmental issues of waste disposal and greenhouse gas emission reduction. This paper examines attitudes toward adoption of this conservation technology on dairy farms. To specify an appropriate dependent variable without a large number of adopters, an ordered probit model is constructed. The empirical analysis uses data from a 2006 survey of Pacific Northwest dairy farms. Aggregate variables are constructed based on behavioral economics and conservation adoption literature. Variables include private and social costs, social motives, capacity, innovation receptivity, and opportunity costs, most of which are found to be highly related to the decision to seriously consider adoption. (JEL Q53, Q55)

Limited access to services for the urban poor in Windhoek, Namibia

Many seasonal workers are housed in transitory accommodations, including tents and vehicles. In this study, we analyze the supply side of this problem by assuming that a public agent must house the workers through direct public investment. A peak load model is adapted to develop investment rules for the least-cost provision of seasonal worker housing, adding an interacting multi-season component to existing models. Based on this model and the data from three prototype projects, the majority of the least-cost investment would be in permanent, but seasonally occupied, housing.

Making Friends to Influence Others: Entry and Contribution Decisions That Affect Social Capital in an Association

ABSTRACT The majority of the population living in the informal settlements of Windhoek, Namibia, have limited access to public municipal services. This paper integrates results from a sample of 97 randomly selected households, interviews with experts and community leaders and review of literature to describe and analyse the relationship between land tenure and municipal services in the informal settlements. Findings from our study show that formalised land tenure is a condition for households to access municipal services privately. However, 85% of the sample of the households in the informal settlements do not own land under current land tenure policy. Further, the need for communities ‘to own land’ seemed more immediate and pressing compared to water access, which is seen as a way to govern themselves towards raising funds for land acquisition. But lack of land ownership remains a constraint.

Waiting for the Invisible Hand: Market Power and Endogenous Information in the Modern Market for Food

We examine factors affecting entry and contribution to an association that provides different goods using social capital formed by heterogeneous firms in a political economy environment. We model and solve a game that explains investments to form social capital within associations and determine the effect on the intensive and extensive marginal contributions to the association related to the government’s susceptibility to influence. Association products such as capital goods for members or lobbying the government to influence regulation affect membership and contribution decisions. Government influenceability also affects the decision to contribute to social capital, but it varies with agent productivity and association output. Often, an increase in government influenceability increases social capital in associations composed of high productivity agents because they prefer to influence policy while low productivity agents focus on production.

Measuring the Quality of Life across Countries: A Sensitivity Analysis of Well-being Indices

In many ways, the modern market for food exemplifies the economist’s conception of perfect competition, with many buyers, many sellers, and a robust and dynamic marketplace. But over the course of the last century, the U.S. has witnessed a dramatic shift away from traditional diets and toward a diet comprised primarily of processed brand-name foods with deleterious long-term health effects. This, in turn, has generated increasingly urgent calls for policy interventions aimed at improving the quality of the American diet. In this paper, we ask whether the current state of affairs represents a market failure, and—if so—what might be done about it. We review evidence that most of the nutritional deficiencies associated with today’s processed foods were unknown to nutrition science at the time these products were introduced, promoted, and adopted by American consumers. Today more is known about the nutritional implications of various processing technologies, but a number of forces—including consumer habits, costly information, and the market power associated with both existing brands and scale economies—are working in concert to maintain the status quo. We argue that while the current brand-based industrial food system (adopted and maintained historically as a means of preventing competition from small producers) has its advantages, the time may have come to consider expanding the system of quality grading employed in commodity markets into the retail market for food.