Essays on policy analysis in agricultural economics

This thesis studies the effects of agricultural policies on individual behavior. The first chapter addresses the issue of enhancing animal disease biosecurity measures at the producer level. We study a market in which backyard poultry producers vary in type. We examine how compensation policy be designed to provide incentives for biosecurity investment, when it is too costly for the government to directly contract on producer-level biosecurity. The second chapter examines how marginal residue limits (MRLs) affect hop growers' optimal choice of chemical applications to control pests and diseases. We show that all else equal, decreases in the MRL tend to induce risk averse growers to apply fewer chemicals than risk neutral growers. Chapter three looks at how insufficient information and production risk concerning pest infestations affect hop growers' incentives for integrated pest management (IPM) adoption. Chapter four looks at the government program of encourage biomass crop growing and how risk averse growers allocate land between camelina and traditional crops.