Dissertation
Three Essays in Applied Agricultural Economics
Washington State University
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Washington State University
05/2024
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7273/000006583
Abstract
The purpose of this dissertation is to advance economic applications pertaining to agriculture, specifically in labor and crop insurance. The first chapter summarizes relevant background, research objectives, and key findings of the dissertation chapters. The second chapter considers the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on labor market outcomes in essential sectors of the U.S. labor market. Our findings highlight the ambiguous nature of the reservation wage and job characteristic changes in the first three months of the pandemic. We find evidence of unbalanced responses by individual gender, race-ethnicity, immigrant status, education, and household income. Findings also vary with respect to the sector and subsector analyzed. The third chapter highlights the effect of the crop insurance revenue protection basis adjustment to projected prices for winter wheat farmers in Washington. We utilize a representative farmer from Whitman County, Washington to model utility generated from producing soft white or hard red winter wheat. While the policy establishing the basis adjustment does not distinguish between classes of production, there exists evidence that the benefit of enrollment is not equal for both classes. The
fourth chapter applies a simultaneous system framework to consider the farmer decision to allocate cropland acreage to winter wheat and participate in crop insurance. We consider three state samples at the county-level, as well as an combined sample used to represent total U.S. winter wheat production. We find evidence of heterogeneous response to factors contributing to acreage allocation and insurance participation. We find region-specific response to the modernization of crop insurance, but we do not find evidence of the basis adjustment impacting acreage allocation or insurance participation.
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Details
- Title
- Three Essays in Applied Agricultural Economics
- Creators
- Katelin Anne Swanson
- Contributors
- T. Randall Fortenbery (Co-Chair)Jeffrey Luckstead (Co-Chair)Bidisha Mandal (Committee Member)
- Awarding Institution
- Washington State University
- Academic Unit
- Economic Sciences, School of
- Theses and Dissertations
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Washington State University
- Publisher
- Washington State University
- Number of pages
- 169
- Identifiers
- 99901122438701842
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Dissertation