Agricultural Economics Seminar Series - Spring Semester 2012

Spring Semester 2012 seminars will take place on Fridays from 10:30 a.m.-12 noon in Room 119 Ruttan Hall unless otherwise noted.

• January 27 - Sebastien Pouliot (Assistant Professor of Economics,Iowa State University), will present: "Econometric evaluation of the effects of country of origin labeling: the case of Canadian cattle."


• March 9, 2:00-3:30 (Note time change!) - Corinne Alexander (Associate Professor of Agricultural Economics, Purdue University), will present: "Understanding the Economics of Grain Storage in Malawi or (Should We Introduce the Purdue Improved Crop Storage [PICS] Technology?)"


• March 30 - Hayley Chouinard (Associate Professor of Economics, Washington State University), will present: "The role of social capital in providing club goods and influencing public policy."


• May 4 - Nicholas Brozovic (Associate Professor of Agricultural and Consumer Economics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), will present: "Groundwater Management and the Protection of Instream Flows"
  
  Abstract:
  Agricultural groundwater use is increasingly being restricted to address the negative impacts of pumping on instream flows for downstream users and endangered species habitat. Both the instream impacts associated with groundwater use and regulatory compliance costs to water users vary over space, but current regulations are generally spatially uniform. We analyze the effectiveness of alternate policies, including pumping restrictions, irrigation retirement programs, and tradable pumping permits, to reduce instream impacts of groundwater use. We use a geospatial dataset that includes economic and biophysical data on the population of groundwater-irrigated fields in the Nebraska portion of the Republican River Basin, an area with ongoing interstate water conflict. First, we use a geographic information system and numerical modeling to implement a field-level model of deficit irrigation that chooses crop mix, land allocation, and applied water. Second, we analyze the estimated costs of alternate possible water management policies at field, farm, and watershed level. In particular, we consider the extent to which adopting spatially-targeted policies can generate abatement cost savings to farmers while meeting stream flow protection targets. Our analysis suggests that for moderate reductions in aggregate water use, most of the potential cost savings and instream benefits can be obtained without accounting for spatial heterogeneity. However, if regulators need to reduce instream impacts significantly from current levels, spatially differentiated policies will generate sizable cost savings over uniform policies. Moreover. the ranking of policies, in terms of both total costs and instream benefits, is sensitive to the magnitude of water use reduction.

Archives of past Seminars