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Mit Press

Contracts, Risk, and Organization in Agriculture

By: Dean Lueck, Douglas W. Allen

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Paperback | 20 August 2004

At a Glance

Paperback
268 Pages

Age
18+

Dimensions(cm)
22.23 x 16.51 x 1.91

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$88.75

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The Nature of the Farm is a theoretical and empirical study of contracts and organisation in agriculture based on the transaction cost framework. Transaction costs are important in agriculture because nature (for example, seasonality, weather, pests) plays such a critical role in determining output and limiting the ability of farmers to specialise. The book develops specific models and tests the implications of those models against data sets from across North American agriculture, as well as against historical case studies such as eighteenth-century European land contracts and the late nineteenth-century Bonanza farms in the United States. The book is organised in three parts. Part I examines the classic question of what determines the optimal choice between fixed rent and cropshare arrangements, concluding that it is determined by a trade-off between incentives to overuse rented land and incentives to underreport shared output. Part II tests several predictions derived from a standard risk-sharing model of contracts and finds little evidence that risk sharing is important in contract choice. Part III extends the transaction costs analysis to broader organisational issues. It introduces seasonality and timeliness costs as forces influencing the gains from specialisation and the costs of contracting, and finds that farm ownership and farm organisation are routinely shaped by these forces.

Industry Reviews

"This book is a perfect example of good economics, in which theory and empirical analysis mutually benefit each other and both are grounded in a deep understanding of real practices and institutions. The work is highly original and the scholarship sound." - Benito Arrunada, Professor of Business Organisation, Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona

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You Can Find This Book In

Non-Fiction Industry & Industrial Studies Primary Industries Agriculture & Related Industries Business & Management Management & Management Techniques Management Decision Making Law Laws of Specific Jurisdictions Environment Agricultural Law Economics

Engineering & Technology Agriculture & Farming Accounting & Finance Finance

Preface	p. vii
Introduction	p. 1
Farming in North America	p. 17
Contracts and the Transaction Cost Framework	p. 31
The Simplicity of Agricultural Contracts	p. 33
Choosing between Cropshare and Cash Rent Contracts	p. 49
Sharing Inputs and Outputs	p. 69
Risk Sharing as an Alternative Framework	p. 93
Risk Sharing and the Choice of Contract	p. 95
Ratchet Effects in Agricultural Contracts	p. 121
Extending the Framework: Farm Organization	p. 137
Ownership versus Contracting for the Control of Assets	p. 139
Farm Organization and Vertical Control	p. 167
Conclusion	p. 199
Data	p. 205
Mathematical	p. 219
Notes	p. 223
References	p. 243
Index	p. 255
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

Mit Press

Contracts, Risk, and Organization in Agriculture

At a Glance

Paperback

Industry Reviews

Shipping

How to return your order

Defective items

You Can Find This Book In

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