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Non-controllable and non-commercial resources in agricultural production models
This dissertation considers resources which affect or are
affected by agricultural production processes, but which are
not usually included in agricultural economic models. The
second chapter considers the impact of rainfall on the mean
and variability of yield, and the implications of these
effects for agricultural household decisions. Using
household-level data, the empirical study employs production
function estimates to determine household risk preference
characteristics under nonlinear mean-variance utility. The
results indicate that rainfall accounts for a considerable
portion of risk otherwise attributed to household inputs.
When risk and production parameters are estimated jointly,
the model supports decreasing absolute and increasing
relative risk aversion. The results also suggest potential
returns to low-cost forms of irrigation to mitigate growing
season rainfall shortages. The third chapter utilizes the
same household data set to explore a method for jointly
estimating production function and distribution parameters
for beta-distributed yields. Using agricultural household
input and yield data from the Indian semi-arid tropics,
parameters for the conditional beta distribution for crop
yields are estimated. Results indicate a peaked, positively-
skewed density function. The proposed method requires fewer
coefficient estimates and has a higher explanatory power than
approaches previously suggested. Predicted yield
distributions for various farm sizes suggest that mean yields
are inversely related to size and labor households have
considerably lower mean yield and higher variance than farm
households. The fourth chapter addresses the problem of
interactions between commercially harvested and non-
commercial resources, focusing on issues of long term
resource management. Survival of a non-harvested resource
may depend upon stocks of a commecially harvested resource,
but play no economic role in determining optimal harvests.
This chapter exan-tines the two-resource system in an optimal
control framework, and introduces the concept of minimum
viable population. By including in the system a penalty
based on the non-harvested resource stock, that resource
becomes integral to the equilibrium steady state harvest.
Time paths to the steady state may have instantaneous, short-
, and long-term phases with different directions of movement,
suggesting caution in implementing policy based on short term
"Major Subject: Agricultural Economics".
Issued also on microfiche from University Microfilms Inc.
Includes bibliographical references: pages 101-105.