Teaching Net Present Value Analysis: Returns-to-Assets versus Returns-to-Equity

We survey textbooks from agricultural economics and other subject matter areas to determine their treatments of the returns-to-assets versus returns-to-equity methods for determining the net present value of investment projects. Textbook authors disagree about the appropriate method, often give conflicting advice as to how a given method should be applied, and do not show how the results of the two methods can be reconciled. We provide a consolidated discussion of the circumstances under which the two methods produce the same net present value.     

Ex-ante agricultural research evaluation with site specific technology generation: the case of sorghum in Kenya

Agricultural commodity research has very site-specific productivity impacts. Crucial determinants of the magnitude and distribution of research benefits include agroecological conditions for technology generation and adoption, as well as commodity market-structure. This paper presents a process for ex-ante research evaluation which accounts for these factors with a dynamic, spatial multi-market model. Simulation results based on sorghum research in Kenya demonstrate that potential research benefits can vary dramatically research program research target zones. In Kenya, however, population-induced demand growth not technological development will have the greatest influence on future sorghum markets.     

Investigating differences among research projects and implications for managers

As research and innovation have become central to the economy, the challenge of managing these activities has taken on greater importance. Studies have focused on the impact of organizational variables on research activities, such as work environment, human resource factors, and managerial practices. But little attention has been paid to the effect of differences among types of research projects. While the notion that differences exist among research projects is acknowledged, particularly in the research & development portfolio literature, there have been relatively few studies into the dimensions by which research projects, and needs of project team members, differ. Further, there is little recognition that these differences translate into the need for different research project management practices. The objective of this paper is to investigate differences among research projects along three dimensions, amount of funding, complexity of project teams, and research orientation. These dimensions are selected because of their central theoretical importance in the organizational literature, as well as posing a number of different challenges for research management. This study looked at 18 research projects at a national laboratory and analyzed the responses of project members to a comprehensive research environment survey conducted in 2001. The results of the analysis indicate that there are significant differences between types of projects along three dimensions and suggest ways that research performance can be improved through management intervention.     

PRIVATE EQUITY: SOURCES AND USES

Private equity capital is playing a large and growing role in the funding of small to medium-sized, high-growth businesses. Today's private equity investment typically takes the form of purchase of a minority interest in a post-start-up, high-technology company followed by an IPO a few years later. A large number of such investors are scouring the markets for new investment possibilities and the competitive pressures are growing.
Although private equity investors can and often do add significant value to a company, private equity is potentially expensive, in terms of both loss of ownership and loss of control over long-term strategic decisions of the company. Owner-managers who want to retain as much of both as possible are advised to install more formalized business procedures, expand the company's outside relationships, and become more familiar with the company's financial needs and options. These changes should reduce capital needs, reduce the costs of private equity funding, and increase negotiating leverage when dealing with large, sophisticated private capital investors.     

The Impact of Environmental Contamination on Condo Prices: A Hybrid Repeat-Sale/Hedonic Approach

We extend the literature on the impact of externalities using an approach based on a hybrid of hedonic and repeat-sales methods. The externality in question is groundwater contamination in Scottsdale, Arizona. The use of condominium sales allows us to assume that major physical characteristics remain unchanged, but location parameters may be altered by urban growth and development as well as contamination. We find an economically significant discount for properties located in the contaminated area. Interestingly, it does not appear until several years after the contamination becomes publicly known, and it seems to have disappeared before the end of the study period.     

Saint Paul, Minnesota: Excesses of the growth coalition and the rise of the alternative growth coalition

The City of Saint Paul, Minnesota, in the Upper Midwest region of the United States along the Mississippi River, provides an excellent example of the excesses of the growth coalition. It is also a good example of the creation of an alternative growth coalition of neighbourhood-based organisations seeking to ensure that growth benefits those in most economic need.

Like most American cities in the Eastern and Midwestern parts of the United States that grew up as manufacturing centres, Saint Paul experienced some decline in recent decades as its suburban areas grew. Changes in the economy of the country from manufacturing to service sectors and the common inability of central cities to compete with retail shopping centres in the suburban areas left Saint Paul with some areas of vacant land and distressed buildings.     

The consumption based asset pricing model: A note on potential tests and applications

Breeden's demonstration that Merton's multi-beta capital asset pricing model can be collapsed into a single-beta model where betas are computed with respect to aggregate consumption is an important theoretical advance. Nonetheless, Breeden's model retains many of the empirical problems that beset Merton's earlier version. In general the consumption betas will be nonstationary, so that the state variables must be observable for the model to be estimated.     

Office triage and the physician's supply curve

This paper contains a theoretical and empirical model of the physician firm. The utility maximizing physician chooses the number of hours of labor to supply and the mix between patient visits and time per visit. Theory suggests that a serious specification error may occur if one estimates the labor supply curve and patient demand curve without simultaneously estimating the mix between patient visits and time per visit. A Chi-Square specification test reveals that this “triage” model statistically dominates the simple supply/demand model. Estimation results indicate relevant backward-bending labor and negatively sloped service supply functions.     

Specialization,diversification, and productivity: a panel data analysis of rice farms in Korea

This article examines the microeconomics of productivity associated with specialization/diversification in production activities, with an application to Korean rice farms. Korean rice farms tend to be very small and highly specialized. Our analysis examines the productivity effects associated with both farm size and farm specialization/diversification in Korean agriculture. Relying on farm‐level panel data, the analysis studies farm productivity in a multi‐input multi‐output context, accounting not only for changes in inputs and technical change in rice production, but also for the role of diversification in the production of other crops in current and previous periods. We find positive but small productivity gains from farm diversification. These gains come mostly from complementarity effects across farm outputs, with minimal effect of scale economies. The positive complementarity effects work against nonconvexity effects, which provide strong productivity incentives for rice farms to specialize.