The economic development of any area is tied to its natural resource base. Water, one of the most important of these natural resources, is used for a multitude of purposes including crop irrigation, human consumption, food processing, generation of electricity, transportation, recreation and waste disposal.

Municipal water use is essential in the development of any state. Florida is no exception. One of the first considerations in development of an area's water resources is that of furnishing municipal water for commercial, industrial, residential and public uses.

Property tax systems have undergone rapid change in almost every state during the past few years. Consequently, their distributional impact merits investigation. The incidence of the property tax is at the heart of the distributional question. It is generally felt that land owners bear the full burden of property taxes and that changes in it are capitalized into property values. Usually it is assumed that property taxes are not shifted forward to the consumer, but there has been little empirical verification of this notion. This paper will develop a simple model of the land market to test several alternative hypotheses concerning the incidence of property taxes on agricultural land in the United States.

A use-value assessment tax requires a system by which agricultural land values may be established. Land value in agricultural use can in principle be determined from the land's income-generating ability. The value of agricultural land can be based upon the capitalized income stream, which implies that net income attributable to land resource, or more theoretically, its value of the marginal product, can be capitalized into economic value. A major weakness in the process of determining net returns to land is the requirement that returns to other production inputs can be determined accurately. To be exact, the marginal productivity of every input must be known.

The American experience with income taxes began with the Act of 1913, but it was not until 1921 that capital gains were identified separately and taxed differently from other sources of income. This fundamental revision of the income tax was justified on equity grounds; proponents of the change argued that it was unfair to tax income accrued over many years in the year that income was realized [6, p. 192].

The present capital gains provisions have been and are now—strongly attacked alternately as being too lenient and too strict [5, p. 184]. Unfortunately, this symmetry in the opposition to present capital gains treatment does not imply the present provisions are near the optimum.

The influence of credit terms on farm real estate values is a subject on which there are divergent views. Some suggest that readily available credit and liberal terms contributed to the strong gain in farm real estate values in recent years. Credit terms frequently cited as contributing to this situation are increases in Federal Land Bank loan limits from 65 percent of normal agricultural value to a maximum of 85 percent of appraised value of real estate and FHA loan participations with up to 100 percent financing.

A number of analysts support the view that financing terms affect farmland values. For example, Gale indicates that low equity financing increases effective demand for farmland, Atkinson includes new regulations permitting increased lending by Federal Land Banks as one of the factors causing “recent big increases in land values”, and Francl commenting on the same regulation says, “A farmer with a given amount of investment capital, therefore, can bid more for farmland and still finance the loan under the revised downpayment provisions”.

The Stollsteimer plant location model is a normative tool appropriate for deterrmning least-cost number, size and location of a subindustry's marketing facilities. Several modification and extensions of the basic model have increased its value to the applied economist. Ladd and Halvorson developed a procedure to determine sensitivity of the optimal solution to variation in model parameters, i.e., the researcher may resolve how magnitude cost parameters are altered before the solution becomes non-optimal. The basic model's solution procedure prevented application where large numbers of potential plant sites were involved. A recent modification by Warrack and Fletcher effects a reduction in required computer time by approximating optimization, thus increasing size of plant location problems investigated. Polopolus extended the basic model to encompass multiple product plants and, in collaboration with Chern, modified the basic Stollsteimer model to permit substitution of a discontinuous, long-run plant cost function for the strategically assumed continuous linear form. Prior to the latter modification, the basic model accommodated only a long-run total plant cost function which was linear with a positive intercept.

The transhipment problem formulation has been and is still being used extensively by researchers to solve spatial equilibrium and plant location problems. Hurt and Tramel, King and Logan, Rhody, and Judge et al. have all treated the subject of alternative formulations of transhipment problems. This paper (1) proposes an alternative formulation of these problems using a negative-cost technique and, (2) suggests a matrix reduction scheme which will reduce computational time for some problems.

King and Logan used a three region, two-stage formulation of the transhipment model which was reformulated by Hurt and Tramel. As a point of departure, the same sample problem will be used to present the negative-cost formulation. This should enable the reader to more readily determine differences between formulations and decide which formulation best serves his particular needs.

Quantities of insecticides used per acre by cotton producers in the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas are among the nation's highest. This is due to the presence of many different insect pests and especially to their increasing tolerance to insecticides. As insects become resistant to insecticides, farmers tend to increase the number of insecticide applications, further compounding the problem. Even using large amounts of insecticides, control of damaging insects has been unsatisfactory.

Typically, a long-season cotton variety, requiring a 160 to 180 day season, is grown. Because the probability of rainfall is much greater in August than in July [4], most harvesting can be expected in August.

The cotton industry's decline in competitive strength is a matter of increasing concern to industry members and public policymakers. There are many complex economic adjustments arising from changes in government policies, technological advancement, and changing market conditions at home and abroad. The impact of these factors, coupled with increased competition of synthetic fibers and foreign-grown cotton, has been felt by all segments of the industry. Industry experience and recent research results [1, 3] indicate that serious overcapacity has developed in warehousing facilities and, as a consequence, producers and consumers have suffered through increased per-bale storage and assembly costs.

Economic events since the 1972–73 crop year have generated much interest in cottonseed prices. Cotton producers, observing a doubling of wholesale prices of cottonseed oil and meal during the last three years, have wondered whether they are getting an equitable share of this increased income. They have largely stopped thinking of their cottonseed as merely a means of payment for ginning charges and have begun to regard it as a potential source of supplementary income.

The limited objective of this paper is to examine, by regions, the wholesale marketing margin for cottonseed during the crop years of 1958–1973 in order to (1) more clearly determine how the marketing margin has behaved and (2) discover differences, if any, among regional marketing margins.

Since the 1964 United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, less developed countries (LDCs) have been united in expressing concern over their trade problems and long-run balance of payment deficits. The LDCs feel that the more developed countries (MDCs) discriminate against their products by use of tariffs. Tariff relief sought by LDCs includes reduction of tariff rates as well as effective rates applied to raw materials and semiprocessed products.

Tariff relief for LDCs means that domestic industries in the MDSs face stronger competition from those imports that are less costly to produce in other countries, For U.S. growers of winter vegetables, this competition has become intense. Several vegetables produced in Mexico compete with Florida's in the U.S, winter market.

Performance in the food retailing industry varies over time, among competitive markets, and among different organizational affiliations. This paper reports the results of a recent study which examined variation in firm behavior and performance which could be attributed to three phenomena: differences in organizational affiliation, differences among managers within an organizational affiliation, and differences in the competitive environment under which retailers operate. This study differed from some previous behavioral studies in that an experimental business management game was used as the data generator. A central thrust of this study was to evaluate business gaming as a tool which allowed testing of hypotheses concerning economic behavior.

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate some of the dangers inherent in use of statistical tests as a criterion for deleting variables from regression models. The deletion of variables from regression models based on t or F tests of regression coefficients has been a procedure widely followed by applied economists and other researchers. When economic theory does not provide an adequate conceptual basis for rigorous a priori specification of the regression model, one approach to model specification has been to include in the regression equation all variables thought to be “somehow” related to the dependent variable of interest. Subsets of variables with statistically significant coefficients are identified, with the aid of a stepwise regression routine. Truncated models consisting of only those variables with statistically significant regression coefficients are sometimes presented in the published research without reference to the initial data dredging that took place.

A number of economic policies are believed to influence an individual's decision of how many hours or weeks to work. Among these policies are welfare programs, income maintenance plans, and unemployment insurance. To date, questions of agricultural labor response to economic incentives have been analyzed by resorting to aggregate data and models, typically utilizing state or U.S. time series data. While this does provide needed information for analysis of some policies, aggregate data and models are deficient in isolating substitution and income effects. These are necessary for analysis of particular programs affecting only income or affecting the individual's budget constraint in a discontinuous way. In particular, aggregate models cannot approach the question of a backward bending supply curve, since aggregate data include not only variations in duration of employment but also variations in labor force participation.

The USDA's Food Stamp Program (FSP) is a major item in the department's budget. In effect from 1939 to 1943 and revived as a pilot program in 1961, FSP has grown until, in 1973, it provided nearly $4 billion in food stamps to an average of 12 million persons per month. About 55 percent of the $4 billion is federal subsidy. The program is continuing to expand as a result of a congressional mandate that FSP be in effect nationwide after June 30, 1974. Because of the FSP's growth, questions are now being asked about the program's impact on demand for food in the United States.

In its pre-World War II inception, FSP was developed as an alternative to direct distribution of commodities to relief families. Although the objective of improving food consumption among needy households was recognized, FSP was viewed primarily as a method for stimulating demand for farm products.

There has been some perplexity among economists over the failure of interregional wage differentials to approach zero over time in an economy characterized by labor mobility. Johnson [7], and Sjaastad [14], among others, have hypothesized declining wage differentials among regions and have puzzled over contrary empirical results. It has generally been assumed that labor will flow toward regions paying the highest wage rate. This equilibrating framework has dominated economic thought on this problem area and has directed research along narrow market-oriented lines.

The hypothesis of this paper is that nonmarket considerations, specifically psychic costs, are a major force in preventing a market-directed flow of human resources. Moreover, “nonoptimal” allocation of human resources results from differences in workers' perceptions of utility between various regions.

Teaching rural development must reflect the breadth and complexity of the real world situation. Time limitations may restrict the teacher primarily to presentation and discussion of the field's many facets, leaving little time to consider how these diverse elements interact. Even if careful course planning and strict adherence to a course outlined provide classroom time for such consideration, only advanced graduate students are likely to have sufficient expertise to readily understand the relationships, real or hypothesized, resulting from these interactions.

Alternatives in the classroom include giving these relationships only cursory, descriptive treatment, or digging into them with analytical fervor, thereby causing many students a great deal of chagrin. A third alternative is demonstrating interactive aspects of rural development with a game. Such a game is discussed in this paper.

Two major programs — allotment-quota and price support — have been in force to support peanut farming since 1952. The purpose is to restrict production of peanuts while supporting the price of peanuts produced. Production is restricted through the allotment-quota program, determined by the Secretary of Agriculture, and converted to a national acreage allotment. However, minimum national acreage allotment has been fixed at 1.61 million acres. The price support program provided that price be supported no lower than 75 percent of the parity price of peanuts. Under the programs, peanuts produced by the grower are sold on the market at the support price for edible uses and excess quantities are sold to the government at the support price. Peanuts purchased by the government are stored and later sold for crushing at the going market price. Because peanuts for crushing command a much lower price than the government acquisition price, the purchase-and-resale operation results in a net loss representing public cost of the peanut price support program.