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This article shows how horizontal industry integration can arise from transferable asymmetry of technologies and endowments. The Nash bargaining solution suggests that greater technological diversity among coordinating parties yields greater gains from horizontal integration. The framework fits the case where a firm with a superior technology franchises the technology by horizontal integration. The results appear to fit hog production where integration has been primarily horizontal and, in part, broiler production where integration has been both vertical and horizontal. Specifically, technology has been shared through uniform genetic traits, fine-tuned feed rations, and veterinary services specified in grower contracts.

Microeconomic theory provides four competing explanations for partial land allocation to new and traditional seed varieties in HYV adoption decisions: input fixity, portfolio selection, safety-first behavior, and learning. Testing a general model that contains each as a special case suggests that they are jointly most likely to explain land allocation in the HYV adoption decisions of Malawian smallholders. Yet when each explanation is tested to the exclusion of the others (as is usually the case in the literature), competing hypotheses are individually significant. Results suggest that employing approaches based on single explanations may lead to inappropriately narrow conclusions.

This paper develops a structural model of land prices which includes the multidimensional effects of inflation on capital-erosion, savings-return erosion, and real debt reduction as well as the effect of changes in the opportunity cost of capital. The results show that inflation and changes in the real returns on capital are major explanatory factors in farmland price swings in addition to returns to farming. Additionally, the effects of credit market constraints and expectations schemes are considered explicitly in the analytical model

Risk preferences broadly affect many economic decisions when markets are incomplete. Common representations of risk preferences are constant absolute, relative, and partial relative risk aversion. Each of these preference classes has distinct impacts on choice. An econometric test for distinguishing the class of preferences is proposed and implemented for potato supply response in Idaho. The data reject constant absolute and partial relative risk aversion and are congruent with constant relative risk aversion.

Standard definitions of the cost function do not admit risk. Standard (ex post) approaches to cost function estimation yield biased and inconsistent estimates when production is stochastic. Recently an (ex ante) approach to cost function estimation with stochastic production has been developed by imbedding the distance function in the cost function estimation problem. We generalize the approach to consider risk aversion in decision making. Only two empirical studies have considered stochastic production in cost function estimation. Both have required constant returns to scale. We demonstrate a methodology sufficiently general to consider nonconstant returns to scale.

Just and Pope discuss potential explanations for incongruence between agricultural production theory and accumulated empirical evidence. A majority of the explanations are based on heterogeneity of firms.

Hypotheses about state agricultural experiment stations are investigated. Formula funding is found more productive than competitive-grant funding, possibly owing to transactions costs of reviewing and misallocations of pork barrel funding. Heavier administrator involvement in problem choice is found to enhance productivity of applied research where approach and product can be well-specified in advance, but detracts from productivity of pretechnology research where response to individual incentives may lead to more timely adaptations. Stronger vertical integration of pretechnology, applied sciences, and extension activities is found to increase productivity, suggesting the importance of strongly science-based applied research and practical understanding of pretechnology sciences.