It is proposed that “real” research issues are socially relevant, provide findings with utility beyond the profession, and are anticipatory. An industrializing agricultural sector, an evolving political economy of agroenvironmental policy, an increasingly transnational economy, and rapid population growth are important sources of change to which research on real agroenvironmental issues must respond. Specific, identified “real” research issue areas include: benefit-risk assessment methodology; agroenvironmental regulation for industrialized agriculture; trade agreements and environmental quality; the recreation-tourism-agriculture interface; sustainable development; and the formation of preferences. The nature of identified issues suggests more interdisciplinary research, and advances in theory and methodology.

There exists no mechanism for federal agencies, national laboratories, industry, and academic institutions to set a national environmental research agenda. Moreover, funding for social science research is inadequate for providing a sound scientific basis for making environmental policy. Despite this lack of leadership, it is quite possible to define an environmental economic research agenda that could lead to improved policies for protecting and managing the environment. The present paper makes some recommendations from an insider's viewpoint.

This paper reviews prior research by agricultural economists on the demand for food products using scanner data. Thereafter, a differentiated product's oligopoly model with Bertrand price competition is developed and used to specify brand level demand and oligopoly price reaction equations. The model has sufficient detail to estimate brand level price elasticities and price response elasticities which in turn can be used to estimate three indices of market power. The first index estimated is the familiar Rothschild Index. The paper develops estimates two new indexes, the observed index and the Chamberlin quotient for tacit collusion. It concludes with comments on how the proposed method for the measurement of market power in a differentiated oligopoly can be improved.

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are becoming increasingly important to virtually all of the natural and social sciences. Applied economists will find that GIS can make valuable contributions to many of the problems with which they are concerned. Moreover, a great deal of the science behind GIS technology would benefit from the contributions of applied economists. This paper presents some initial suggestions for the ways in which GIS may be important to economics and the GIS related issues concerning which applied economists could provide useful insights.

The effects of managerial ability on farm financial success are analyzed for a 1990 sample of Pennsylvania commercial dairy farms using structural latent variable techniques. Latent factors related to dairy, crop, and financial management are used with herd size to explain farm financial success, measured by net farm income. Results indicate the relative importance of each management variable toward farm financial success.

This paper investigates the impacts of alternative federal dairy policies on the U.S. dairy sector. In addition to the current dairy price support program, five alternatives are investigated: (1) immediate deregulation, (2) gradual deregulation, (3) target price-deficiency payment program without supply control, (4) target price-deficiency payment program with supply control, and (5) mandatory supply control. An econometric model of the national dairy industry is used to simulate quarterly equilibrium price and quantity values at the farm and wholesale levels for each policy over the period 1980–90. Consumers are better off under both immediate and gradual deregulation, as well as the target price-deficiency payment scenarios because prices are lower, enabling them to consume more dairy products. Farmers, as a group, are better off under the two target price-deficiency payment program and supply control scenarios, where milk prices and producer surplus are highest.

The effects of socioeconomic and demographic factors on the consumption of food energy, protein, vitamin A, vitamin C, thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, calcium, phosphorus, and iron are examined. Socioeconomic and demographic factors analyzed are urbanization, region, race, ethnicity, sex, employment status, food stamp participation, household size, weight, height, age, and income. Several of these factors significantly affect consumption of certain nutrients. Income is an important factor affecting the consumption of vitamin A, vitamin C, and calcium. Income elasticities are relatively small at low income levels. For example, income elasticities range from 0.016 for calcium to 0.123 for vitamin C at an income level of $20,000.

Natural resource-based economic development efforts are becoming increasingly popular. Interest focuses on industries that export from a state, in order to expand the state and local economic base. The Northern and Central Appalachian states should be ideally positioned to benefit from forest-based resources, as they have extensive hardwood forests, a favorable growth-to-drain ratio, and easily accessible national and international markets. This paper examines the export levels of several hardwood product industries and uses tobit analysis to examine establishment and location characteristics related to higher export levels.

AJAE per capita page counts provide one measure of an institution's research strength. In this article we refine Willis et al.'s measure of department size and, based on the refined measure, recompute departmental rankings for North American institutions. Results indicate that Northeastern United States departments are more widely represented among the top 20 institutions than 20 years ago and that two Canadian institutions—Guelph and British Columbia—rank in the top 12. The median AJAE publication frequency for the top 30 research institutions is about one article per research faculty member every 12 years. The AJAE page-count measure was found to be highly correlated (R2 = 0.82) with citation counts, whether narrowly or broadly defined. Thus, AJAE page counts appear to provide a simple yet valid representation of institutional research productivity.

Response rates are one indicator of a survey's data quality, as a great deal of importance has been placed on the mail survey's response rate. However, a telephone survey's response rate usually is not reported. Even if one is reported, the numbers used in the calculation are rarely defined making the response rate interpretation unclear. Using a recent telephone survey of Pennsylvania dairy managers, this paper demonstrates how telephone survey data should be reported. Essentially, every research report should include a discussion of how the survey was conducted, a disposition table, and well-defined formulas used to calculate response rates.

Impacts of alternative federal milk marketing policies which result in reduced fluid (Class I) milk prices were assessed using a simulation model of the U.S. dairy industry. Results indicated that milk production, farm milk prices and producer revenues were significantly reduced in the Southern and Northeast regions of the country under some options. The regional shares of total U.S. milk production were not significantly altered from those which would exist under a continuation of the current policy.

We assess the nonmarket value for retention of farmland in the Moncton area of New Brunswick. We examine a number of factors explaining household external values for farmland preservation and expand on previous work by Beasley et al., Bergstrom et al., and Halstead. Our findings indicate that the marginal external benefit of preserving farmland in general in this region is small compared to the market price and that spatial embedding is not automatic in contingent valuation studies.

Factors affecting the frequency of purchase of fish and other seafood for at-home and restaurant consumption by Northeastern consumers were investigated. Cluster analysis identified six groups of consumers with similar perceptions of the attributes of fish. Demographic and cluster membership variables were employed in logistic regressions to identify the characteristics of frequent at-home use and restaurant purchasers. At-home purchase was more likely to be frequent among respondents with white collar occupations, older ages, urban/suburban and New England residence, recreational fishing participation, and membership in one of five attitudinal clusters. Restaurant purchase was more likely to be frequent among whites and among those with higher incomes, white collar occupations, recreational fishing involvement and among members of two clusters with favorable attitudes toward fish; it was less likely to be frequent in households with children age 10 and under present.

Crop yields which determine farm income deficiency payments have been frozen at 1981-1985 levels since 1986. Data from a longitudinal survey of Ohio farm operators are analyzed to evaluate whether updating payment yields will differentially affect farm operators. Results of the analysis imply that farm operators who operate larger farms, live in counties with higher yields, and have higher fertilizer and pesticide expenses per acre of corn will benefit more. In addition, low (high) existing payment yields are understated (overstated) relative to updated payment yields.