Farmers in grain industries make important decisions about investment in crop sowing machinery. This paper shows how some on-farm factors affect profit-maximising levels of investment in crop sowing machinery. The paper examines the effect on optimal investment of discontinuities in sowing opportunities, varietal portfolios and soil portfolios.
With the Punta del Este Declaration, agriculture was accorded prominence in the GATT negotiations and, for the first time, national support policies were on the agenda. In this paper, the progress of the negotiations on agriculture is reviewed in an attempt to understand the factors which shaped the final outcome and to assess the likely impact of the round on liberalising agricultural trade. Although the immediate impact is likely to be modest, the round will provide longer term benefits to agricultural trade through the extension of the GATT rules-based system to agriculture, The framework which has been laid should provide a sound basis for future negotiations, Within the multilateral framework, the pace of change is a function of the willingness of all parties to compromise and this is evident in the Uruguay Round's outcome which reflects the European Union's agricultural reform agenda.
Non-compensatory preferences may form a significant component of individuals' values for non-market goods such as natural areas, especially in the context of a reduction in environmental quality. The widespread neglect of such preferences can result in erroneous estimates of changes in economic welfare. Non-market valuation using techniques such as contingent valuation therefore need to take into account the possibility that some individuals hold non-compensatory preferences. The formal structure of the lexicographic non-compensatory ordering is described, and the theoretical implications of an individual holding such preferences over some region of goods space is examined. A method for the empirical identification of non-compensatory preference orderings is outlined.
This paper demonstrates that, in situations in which a cumulative externality exists, the basic nature and extent of resource misallocation may be substantially less than we imagine. This conclusion stems from deriving consistent conjectures In a unified framework in which congestion is present. Experiments support the conclusion that, when numbers of agents are small, when there is little heterogeneity among them, and when they have the opportunity to observe each other during repeated experiment, the market allocation may be efficient.
A pathogenic, soil-borne fungus has been gradually spreading through the jarrah forest of Western Australia for most of this century. On some sites this fungus can cause almost total forest destruction. Infection is incurable and the effects are irreversible. This paper develops a means for evaluating disease control measures and identifying the optimal level of protection. Standard protection measures are warranted for high and moderate impact sites, over a wide range of risks. Increased expenditure on forest protection is warranted for high and moderate impact sites at especially high risk.
The fundamental assumption of the contingent valuation method (CYM) is that responses to CY questionnaires may be interpreted as expressions of consumer preferences. The consumer preference interpretation has been challenged in recent papers arguing that willingness to pay for wildlife preservation is generated, at least in part, by ethical concerns, rather than by a view that wildlife preservation will yield any benefit to individual respondents. Some further evidence bearing upon these questions is derived from a study of forest management in Australia undertaken by the Resource Assessment Commission (RAC). The evidence supports the interpretation that respondents are acting primarily as citizens.
