The potential for market failure resulting from under-investment in research is one justification... more The potential for market failure resulting from under-investment in research is one justification for public agricultural research. This justification seems less germane given recent developments regarding intellectual property protection and the size of private biotechnology firms. This article explores an alternative justification for public support of biotechnology research in agriculture.
The Great Plains wheat farmer must accept many production and price risks. One of these productio... more The Great Plains wheat farmer must accept many production and price risks. One of these production risks is the possibility that a severe hail storm will damage his growing crop. Being typically .a localized event, a hail storm can be particularly damaging to the farmer's net income because a hail occurence can severely reduce one farmer's production but not visibly
Using a conceptual forecasting format that is similar to some in current operational use, trade-o... more Using a conceptual forecasting format that is similar to some in current operational use, trade-offs between climate forecast quality and economic value are examined from the perspective of the forecast user. Various scenarios for climate forecast quality are applied to corn production in east-central Illinois. A stochastic dynamic programming model is used to obtain the expected value of the various scenarios. As anticipated, the results demonstrate that the entire structure of the forecast format interacts to determine the economic value of that system. Additional results indicate two possible preferred directions for research concerning climate forecasting and economic applications such as corn production in Illinois. First, increasing forecast quality by decreasing the error between the observed condition and the forecast condition may be preferred to increasing quality by increasing the number of predictions in the correct category. Second, corn producers may prefer research to increase the quality of forecasts for `poorer' climatic conditions over research directed toward increasing the quality of forecasts for `good' conditions.
Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 1992
The paper presents an analysis of climate prediction needs and uses within six important subsegme... more The paper presents an analysis of climate prediction needs and uses within six important subsegments of the agribusiness sector. Results are based on a mail survey of 114 managers. Although nearly 70% of the respondents indicated some use of climate predictions in the last year, only 1 in 8 of the respondents used that information in a specific decision. Lack
... Steven T. Sonka, Robert H. Hornbaker and Michael A. Hudson ... Professor, Assistant Professor... more ... Steven T. Sonka, Robert H. Hornbaker and Michael A. Hudson ... Professor, Assistant Professor and Assistant Professor, respectively, of Agricultural Economics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Support for this work came from Hatch Project No. ...
The types and sources of information used in the farmers' decision-making process are divers... more The types and sources of information used in the farmers' decision-making process are diverse. The primary purpose of this paper is to examine the use of internal financial information by the farm firm; specifically, the factors that influence the probability of farmers' ...
The potential for market failure resulting from under-investment in research is one justification... more The potential for market failure resulting from under-investment in research is one justification for public agricultural research. This justification seems less germane given recent developments regarding intellectual property protection and the size of private biotechnology firms. This article explores an alternative justification for public support of biotechnology research in agriculture.
The Great Plains wheat farmer must accept many production and price risks. One of these productio... more The Great Plains wheat farmer must accept many production and price risks. One of these production risks is the possibility that a severe hail storm will damage his growing crop. Being typically .a localized event, a hail storm can be particularly damaging to the farmer's net income because a hail occurence can severely reduce one farmer's production but not visibly
Using a conceptual forecasting format that is similar to some in current operational use, trade-o... more Using a conceptual forecasting format that is similar to some in current operational use, trade-offs between climate forecast quality and economic value are examined from the perspective of the forecast user. Various scenarios for climate forecast quality are applied to corn production in east-central Illinois. A stochastic dynamic programming model is used to obtain the expected value of the various scenarios. As anticipated, the results demonstrate that the entire structure of the forecast format interacts to determine the economic value of that system. Additional results indicate two possible preferred directions for research concerning climate forecasting and economic applications such as corn production in Illinois. First, increasing forecast quality by decreasing the error between the observed condition and the forecast condition may be preferred to increasing quality by increasing the number of predictions in the correct category. Second, corn producers may prefer research to increase the quality of forecasts for `poorer' climatic conditions over research directed toward increasing the quality of forecasts for `good' conditions.
Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 1992
The paper presents an analysis of climate prediction needs and uses within six important subsegme... more The paper presents an analysis of climate prediction needs and uses within six important subsegments of the agribusiness sector. Results are based on a mail survey of 114 managers. Although nearly 70% of the respondents indicated some use of climate predictions in the last year, only 1 in 8 of the respondents used that information in a specific decision. Lack
... Steven T. Sonka, Robert H. Hornbaker and Michael A. Hudson ... Professor, Assistant Professor... more ... Steven T. Sonka, Robert H. Hornbaker and Michael A. Hudson ... Professor, Assistant Professor and Assistant Professor, respectively, of Agricultural Economics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Support for this work came from Hatch Project No. ...
The types and sources of information used in the farmers' decision-making process are divers... more The types and sources of information used in the farmers' decision-making process are diverse. The primary purpose of this paper is to examine the use of internal financial information by the farm firm; specifically, the factors that influence the probability of farmers' ...
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