Data on costs and benefits of the major environmental laws passed during the 1970s are reviewed. The winners in terms of benefit-cost analysis include: getting lead out of gasoline, controlling particulate air pollution, reducing the concentration of lead in drinking water, and the cleanup of hazardous waste sites with the lowest cost per cancer case avoided under Superfund. The losers include: mobile source air pollution control, water pollution control, and many of the regulations and cleanup decisions taken under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act, the Toxic Substances Control Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, and Superfund.

As traditional methods of municipal solid waste management (MSWM) become increasingly expensive due to increased regulation, many local governments are considering cooperation as a waste management strategy. A theoretical model is used to specify a partial observability probability model to analyze the decision Tennessee counties made to form either a single-county solid waste region or a multi-county region. We find that, while economies of scale may be a factor in the consolidation decision, similarities and differences between counties in current individual provision levels of solid waste services, ability to pay for services, and expectations for future solid waste service demands are statistically more important.

The National Research Council report entitled Colleges of Agriculture at the Land Grant Universities: Public Service and Public Policy was released in spring 1996. Several of the study recommendations may be particularly pertinent and interesting to the land grant colleges of the Northeast. This article reviews the study background, process, and general conclusions. It highlights several specific recommendations of potential interest in the Northeast, including those relating to federal support through formula funds and competitive grants, regionalization of programs, and integrating and balancing teaching, research, and extension.

A pilot tree fruit pest management program in Wayne County, New York was evaluated. Thirty-three blocks of fruit were matched for 26 participants in the pilot program and for 23 nonparticipants. Participants reduced pesticide costs and total pest management costs in comparison to nonparticipants. Factors which will affect the adoption of Integrated Pest Management in other locations include the attitudes of growers, farm size, and the density of fruit production. Integrated Pest Management programs are economically feasible for several other areas of high tree fruit density in the Northeast.

Immigration has changed the United States from having a predominantly white to a more ethnically diverse population. People who move to the U.S. may initially have diets unlike native-born Americans but gradually adopt eating patterns more like them. Using NHANES data and a censored gamma regression model, this study estimated the daily consumption of major food products among groups of immigrants and the corresponding groups born in the U.S. Results show that immigrants had lower consumption of meat and higher consumption of fruits and vegetables, and immigrants’ consumption converged towards a less healthy American diet after five years in the U.S.

This study analyses the value of a switching option in a flexible biorefinery plant that produces ethanol and sugar juice in a single plant using energy beets. A real-options approach is used to compute threshold prices and optimal switching decision rules for switching between sugar and ethanol production modes. The analysis shows that it is economically optimal to keep producing ethanol then switching to sugar juice, given the stochastic price parameters of the two products.

A regulatory liability-based approach to reducing foodborne illnesses is widely used in the U.S. But how effective is it? We exploit regulatory regime variation across states and over time to examine the relationship between product liability laws and reported foodborne illnesses. We find a positive and statistically significant relationship between strict liability with punitive damages and the number of reported foodborne illnesses. We find, however, no statistically significant relationship between strict liability with punitive damages and the number of foodborne illness-related hospitalizations and deaths.

Pest-free status certification is desirable if the demand-side impacts (increased export revenue) and supply-side impacts (lower pest damage and decreased ongoing control costs) exceed the compliance monitoring and eradication costs. Thus, eradication may be optimal without certification. Certification is more likely for regions facing costly treatment requirements (bans) or possessing geographic traits that lower monitoring costs and infestation probabilities than for those exporting higher-valued products. Certification benefits producers but hurts consumers. Thus, political feasibility may be greater if domestic consumption is a small share of the market and if the additional tax burden of certification programs is light.

We analyze the rate of survival of hybrid seed corn in the U.S. market between 2000 and 2007 and find that product characteristics and market structures have significant impacts. The results suggest that survival rates depend on spillover effects of learning regarding genetically modified seeds and close substitute seeds and that hybrids planted in the Corn Belt survive longer in the market than hybrids planted in other parts of the country. Given increasing concentration in seed and agricultural biotechnology sectors, our results shed light on factors that affect the survival of hybrid corn seeds under various market conditions.

The robustness of dynamic dual model results across functional forms is examined for the U.S. dairy industry. Modified generalized Leontief (GL) and normalized quadratic (NQ) functional forms are compared by examining their consistency with properties of the competitive firm, estimated rates of adjustment for cows and labor, tests of technological change, and elasticities. Homogeneity and symmetry are maintained in both models. Convexity is not rejected by the GL and is not seriously violated by the NQ. Absence of technological change is rejected by both models, but quality indexes on labor and cows fully embody technological change occurring within labor and cows in the NQ but not in the GL. Policy-relevant elasticities differ greatly between the functional forms. Dynamic dual models are found to be non-robust in important ways to choice of functional form.

We analyze the benefits of incorporating climate change into land conservation decisions using wetland migration under rising sea-levels as a case study. We use a simple and inexpensive decision method, a knapsack algorithm implemented in Excel, with (1) simulation data to show that ignoring sea-level rise predictions lead to suboptimal outcomes, and (2) an application to land conservation in Phippsburg, Maine to show the real-world applicability. The simulation shows an 11-percent to almost 30-percent gain in increased benefits when accounting for sea-level rise. The results highlight that it is possible to, and important to, incorporate sea-level rise into conservation planning.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture proposed and adopted a new set of meal pattern requirements for the National School Lunch Program that will allow schools to claim 6 cents more in lunch reimbursement rates. This study analyzes the food costs of school menus in 2005 that met many of the proposed requirements. Overall, schools that served more, and more diverse, non-starchy vegetables had higher average food costs, and schools that served menus with lower calories had lower food costs. The food costs of school lunch menus that met the combined standards for dark green vegetables, orange vegetables, other vegetables, lowfat/fat-free milk, and fruit averaged 9 cents more per meal in 2005 dollars when other major factors that could affect food choices are taken into account. The main sources of higher costs appear to be related to the provisions for more vegetables.

The production structure of a selected cross-section sample of family owner-operated dairy farms is investigated using a translog variable cost function. Elasticities of scale, input substitution, and input own- and cross-price elasticities are estimated. At the sample mean herd size of 67 cows producing at 15,173 pounds of milk per cow, the elasticity of scale parameter was 1.00, implying constant returns to scale. The elasticities of substitution between feeds and hired labor and the own- and cross-price elasticities were inelastic.

Animal disease events can lead to international trade restrictions which can vary in duration, products included, and geographical extent. Accounting for multilateral resistance between trading partners, a general gravity model of trade is estimated with a Hausman-Taylor and a Hausman-Taylor seemingly unrelated estimator to evaluate the trade quantity impact by commodity resulting from highly pathogenic poultry disease events in 24 exporting markets. Commodity specific results show that quantity traded and products demanded during a disease event differ by commodities. Understanding these impacts can better prepare exporters for potential changes in trade quantity given a disease event.

Farm-level data from the Farm Financial Management Database (FINBIN) are used to evaluate the effectiveness of Whole Farm Revenue Protection (WFRP) insurance in diverse farming operations. A panel of diverse Minnesota farms is used to establish actual production history and compute hypothetical performance over three years. This study characterizes the relative riskiness between organic and conventional farms and their comparative insurance performances by avoiding potential adverse selection issues in other studies. Empirical evidence is provided to dispute past empirical findings suggesting that organic farms are riskier than conventional farms, as measured by lower loss ratios.

Traditional measures of productivity growth may not fully account for all sources of growth during the transition from conventional to alternative cropping systems. This paper treats soil quality as part of the production process and incorporates it directly into rotational measures of productivity growth. An application to data from an experimental cropping system in Pennsylvania suggests that both experimental learning and soil-quality improvements were important sources of growth during the system's transition.

Flood proofing first entered the flood damage reduction literature with the pioneering work of John Sheaffer. Prior to this, flood control measures considered were predominantly structural – consisting of dams, levees, dikes, channel improvements, etc. The addition of flood proofing to other flood damage reduction measures has broadened the choice among the existing alternatives for decision makers. Unlike the structural measures, flood proofing measures do not actually reduce flood stage or prevent the water from reaching the structures, but rather are as considered by Sheaffer, “adjustments to structures and contents which are designed and/or adopted primarily to reduce flood damages”.

Farm-to-hospital (FTH) programs can potentially improve the economy of local communities and preserve the environment. Research on adoption of farm-to-hospital (FTH) programs is extremely limited in the agricultural and applied economics literature. Using data from our 2012 regional FTH program survey of hospital food-service directors in the Northeastern United States and from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, this study estimates a logit model to determine factors that influence a hospital's decision to adopt an FTH program. The empirical results indicate that specific hospital characteristics and agricultural factors significantly influence a hospital's decision to adopt.

The decade of the 1980s saw a resurgence of concern over the environmental and health effects of agricultural production that exceeded even the concern in the sixties generated by the publication of Rachel Carson's book, Silent Spring. Consumers worried about the health effects of pesticide residues on foods; conversion of wetlands to crop production was blamed for the decreased population of migratory waterfowl; rural residents worried about the effects of nitrates and pesticides found in their groundwater supplies; and sediment, nutrients, and pesticides in surface waters were blamed for the decline of estuaries such as the Chesapeake Bay and contributed to problems in freshwater and coastal fisheries.

In previous work (Cropper et al.), we examined the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) decision to cancel or continue the registration of pesticides that went through its Special Review process between 1975 and 1989. Our focus in that paper was on the final decision (Notice of Final Determination) issued by the EPA at the end of the rule-making process. Specifically, we asked whether this decision could be explained by the reported risks and benefits associated with pesticide use, and by the comments of special-interest groups that were entered in the public docket.