Policymakers and value chain members often use a one-size-fits-all strategy to increase local food consumption. Our results indicate this approach may not be effective; local food buyers and nonbuyers have differing barriers to purchasing more or accessing local food. We examine the effect of demographics, health indicators, shopping location, and zip code on those barriers. Prices and availability are barriers for both buyers and nonbuyers. Consumers with higher healthy diet scores are more likely to think about local food availability. Providing specific products is a more viable strategy than creating additional purchasing venues. These results are important, as governments seek to increase local food purchases and enhance local agriculture.

The hedonic pricing technique was used to measure that component of house price attributable to proximity to a city park, using data on sale prices and characteristics of houses in Worcester, MA. Aggregation of these residual values over all houses in the neighborhood of a park provided an estimate of the value of the park, to which was added an estimate of recreation benefits from extrazonal users. The policy question of park system development or contraction was addressed by comparing these benefits with operating costs to gain a net measure of parkland value.

This study explores factors affecting adoption of two stormwater management practices, rain gardens and rain barrels. Mail survey data from Columbia, Missouri indicate adoption rates of 3.12 percent (rain gardens) and 7.47 percent (rain barrels). This unique dataset enables us to distinguish among nonadopters using knowledge levels, and to investigate the effect of practice-specific barriers. Clustered multinomial logistic regressions reveal serious gardeners are more likely to adopt both practices. Specific barriers differ by practice and type of nonadopter. Adding practice-specific barriers increased pseudo R2 values from 0.12 to 0.22 for rain gardens and from 0.13 to 0.26 for rain barrels.

This paper considers the treatment of “don't know” (DK) responses to referendum contingent valuation questions. The determinants of DK responses are empirically analyzed using a data set from a survey of old growth forest valuation. It is found that DK respondents possess unique characteristics that differentiate them from Yes and No respondents. These findings do not support the most common treatments of DK responses that are currently used. Responses to an open-ended question included in the survey are used to provide further insight into the preferences of DK respondents.

This paper introduces a web-based computer program designed to evaluate weather risk management and weather insurance in the United States. The paper outlines the economics of weather risk in terms of agricultural production and household well-being; defines weather risk in terms of intensity, duration, and frequency; and illustrates the computer program use by comparing heat and precipitation risks at Ardmore, Oklahoma, and Ithaca, New York.

This study examines vertical coordination in the wine industry emerging in Illinois. We find that quality matters as temporal issues related to grape perishability increase the probability of written contracts being used to procure grapes. Holdup concerns related to sourcing adequate quality grapes and at-risk investments in grape storage and winemaking equipment lead to vertical integration. In general, larger wineries must obtain some grapes from outside vineyards and sell wine predominantly through tasting rooms and distributors. Smaller wineries rely more on direct sales to retailers, festivals, and farmers' markets. Marketing outlet selection also reflects the types of wine produced.

Response rates are one indicator of a survey's data quality, as a great deal of importance has been placed on the mail survey's response rate. However, a telephone survey's response rate usually is not reported. Even if one is reported, the numbers used in the calculation are rarely defined making the response rate interpretation unclear. Using a recent telephone survey of Pennsylvania dairy managers, this paper demonstrates how telephone survey data should be reported. Essentially, every research report should include a discussion of how the survey was conducted, a disposition table, and well-defined formulas used to calculate response rates.

We study changes in farming in the Marcellus region associated with unconventional natural gas drilling activity. Due to concerns raised by the popular press, we consider 18 different county-level agricultural variables. While we find no significant changes in the number of farms or land in farms in drilling counties relative to non-drilling counties, there is an increase in median farm sizes, indicating potential consolidation in drilling counties. Despite anecdotal evidence suggesting a transition away from dairy farming to either beef or hay production, we find no support for this at the county level.

The role of land values in the dairy industry of an urban-influenced region is investigated by estimating a dairy herd equation based on pooled cross-section and time-series data from counties in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and New York. The use of cross-terms between hypothesized causal variables and a dummy variable capturing the effect of location allowed the estimation of the differences across states in the effects of milk, feed, and land prices. Results confirm the important role of rising land values in the decline of the dairy industry in the tri-state area, and suggest greater vulnerability of dairy enterprises in urban-influenced areas to rising adverse economic forces. The adverse effects of declining milk prices and higher land values are greatest in New Jersey. The results support the notion that programs such as price support, farmland preservation, farmland assessment, and right-to-farm may have to be maintained in order to retain dairy farms at the urban fringe, where land values are rising rapidly.

As growers adopt and diffuse improved food crop cultivars, their investment decisions for producing new cultivars control product accessibility and directly affect the entire supply chain. In this study, we estimated growers’ willingness to invest (willingness to pay (WTP)) in cultivars with improved quality traits for five rosaceous fruit crops: apple, peach, strawberry, sweet cherry, and tart cherry. WTP values differed by crop, but fruit flavor was consistently rated one of the most important traits, with higher WTP. This information will help breeding programs focus resources to develop superior cultivars for long-term economic sustainability of the rosaceous fruit industry.

Food hubs are of interest in regional and local food system development because they potentially enhance the sustainability of food supply chains. Expanding on earlier literature, this study introduces economies of scale into an aggregation hub location model and disaggregates production into four seasons to account for geographic and seasonal variation of US fresh produce production. A mixed integer linear programming model is formulated with the objective of minimizing total costs of assembly and first-handler operations. Results suggest scale economies have significant effects on the optimal number, locations, and sizes of aggregation hubs. We model regional and local food systems in a manner more consistent with economic theory and provide a richer framework for policy analysis.

This paper presents a dynamic principal-agent model of aquatic species invasions in which a manager, concerned about the spread of invasive species across lakes by boaters, sets interseasonal management controls on a lake-by-lake basis, and boaters make a series of intraseasonal trip decisions to maximize random utility during the course of the season, conditional on the controls imposed by the manager. The results of a simulated invasion of Eurasian watermilfoil (Myriophyllum spicatum) highlight interesting aspects of the optimal management policies under two different management objectives: maximizing boater welfare and minimizing milfoil spread.

Ecosystem management may extend multiple use management, where economists identify and value a complex mix of ecosystem outputs. The dominant theme in conservation biology favors “safe minimum standard” (SMS) constraints on ecosystem attributes, which respond to complex and purely uncertain ecological knowledge and lead economists toward valuation questions that identify “tolerable” constraints. A hierarchical SMS constraint raises substitution possibilities among ecosystem-level components. Economists may identify unavoidable resource tradeoffs, such as in allocating land among elements of a reserve network, particularly when ecological wealth differs among geographically dispersed human communities. Economic and ecological ironies obfuscate intuitive contributions to ecosystem management policy.

Agricultural and wildlife trade is subject to sudden, disruptive import restrictions arising from concerns over sanitary and phytosanitary safety and the conservation of natural resources. These restrictions can create significant international price differences that encourage the smuggling of goods across borders. This article presents an equilibrium model of smuggling where the supply and demand for smuggled goods depend on interregional price disparities in the presence of a trade ban. In this model, smuggling is more prevalent when demand and supply among trade partners is more inelastic or when there are fewer total trade partners at the time a trade ban is enacted. Applications are presented for regionalization, destruction of goods in government eradication programs, price support, stockpiling, and the development of substitutes. Regionalization may increase smuggling under certain production and consumption patterns.

Pesticide regulation has become a topic of increasing interest in recent years, owing to rising public concerns about residues on foods, in drinking-water wells, and damage to wildlife. Public-opinion polls and political responses to incidents like the controversy over Alar suggest that demand for government intervention to protect public health and the environment from pesticides is high. Pesticides are toxic by design; survey evidence indicates that they are perceived as riskier than other, more common pollutants like auto exhaust (see, for example, Horowitz). Pesticide residues are not easily observable (short of laboratory analysis), making averting strategies by individuals extremely difficult and/or excessively costly to implement.

Innovation is an important part of energy policy, and encouraging clean energy innovation is often an explicit goal of policy makers. For local governments, promoting clean energy innovation is seen not only as a pathway to a cleaner economy but also as a tool for promoting the local economy. But is such optimism warranted? There is a substantial literature examining the relationships between innovation and environmental policy, but few studies focus explicitly on innovation at the state and local level. In this paper, I provide key lessons from research on clean energy innovation, focusing on lessons relevant for state and local governments. I then summarize the results of a recent working paper by Fu et al. (2018) that studied wind energy innovation across individual states in the United States. While state-level policies can promote clean energy innovation, it is overall market size that matters most. Thus, innovation need not occur in those states most actively promoting clean energy. I conclude with lessons for state and local governments drawn from both this work and the broader literature on energy innovation.

We show how to solve the stochastic spatial-temporal price equilibrium model numerically using the Chebychev collocation method. We then use the model to analyze the joint and interactive stabilizing effects of competitive storage and trade.

A difference-in-differences approach is used to measure the impact of new inner-city grocery store developments on residential housing values in Worcester, Massachusetts. Using geocoded housing sales from 1988–2011, we develop a hedonic model, exploiting temporal and spatial discontinuities, to identify the effect of 12 new grocery stores on neighborhood housing prices. Results suggest these new stores were associated with an increase in sale prices of nearby homes, and these results could help inform current policies related to urban food deserts, in that new grocery stores have the potential to improve neighborhood wealth as well as health.

The Wisconsin Economic Impact Modeling System, a conjoined input-output/econometric model of Wisconsin counties, is used to simulate the economic and fiscal impact of two alternative residential development patterns. Under the first scenario, the impact of migrating retirees on a small tri-county region in northern Wisconsin is examined. Under the second scenario, the impact of the migration of younger families with children is examined. A comparison-contrast between the two scenarios demonstrates that the characteristics of the migrating household can have a significant impact on the nature of the impacts.

This study analyzes U. S. consumers' choice of cornflakes under five different labeling statements. Using a nationwide survey and choice modeling framework, results indicate that consumers value labeling statements differently, depending on the information contained on the label. The random parameter logit model results indicated that, compared to cornflakes that have no label information, cornflakes labeled “contains no genetically modified com” have a value of 10 percent more, the label “USDA approved genetically modified com” has a value of 5 percent more, and the label “com genetically modified to reduce pesticide residues in your food” has a value of 5 percent more. The results also suggest that consumers negatively valued the label “contains genetically modified com,” paying 6.5 percent less, and the label “may contain genetically modified com,” paying 1 percent less than the product that has no label information.