Essays on Firm Heterogeneity with Empirical Applications in Economic History and Agricultural Economics

This thesis uses models of firm-heterogeneity to complete empirical analyses in economic history and agricultural economics. In Chapter 2, a theoretical model of firm heterogeneity is used to derive a statistic that summarizes the welfare gains from the introduction of a new technology. The empirical application considers the use of mechanical steam power in the Canadian manufacturing sector during the late nineteenth century. I exploit exogenous variation in geography to estimate several parameters of the model. My results indicate that the use of steam power resulted in a 15.1 percent increase in firm-level productivity and a 3.0-5.2 percent increase in aggregate welfare. Chapter 3 considers various policy alternatives to price ceiling legislation in the market for production quotas in the dairy farming sector in Quebec. I develop a dynamic model of the demand for quotas with farmers that are heterogeneous in their marginal cost of milk production. The econometric analysis uses farm-level data and estimates a parameter of the theoretical model that is required for the counterfactual experiments. The results indicate that the price of quotas could be reduced to the ceiling price through a 4.16 percent expansion of the aggregate supply of quotas, or through moderate trade liberalization of Canadian dairy products. In Chapter 4, I study the relationship between farm-level productivity and participation in the Commercial Export Milk (CEM) program. I use a difference-in-difference research design with inverse propensity weights to test for causality between participation in the CEM program and total factor productivity (TFP). I find a positive correlation between participation in the CEM program and TFP, however I find no statistically significant evidence that the CEM program affected TFP.

Economic, social, and demographic characteristics of Spanish-American wage workers on U.S. farms /

Cover title.

Rail-highway crossing safety fatal crash and demographic descriptors.

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Office of Research and Development, Washington, D.C.

The Boston Cooking School magazine of culinary science and domestic economics.

Description based on: v. 3, no. 3 (Oct./Nov. 1898)

An educational program for household employment : trade and industrial and home economics education.

"November 1936 [i.e. 1935]"

Education and research in agriculture and home economics in the United States, Supplementing exhibit of the States Relations Service, United States Department of Agriculture at the Brazil centennial exposition, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1922-1923.

Report prepared for the Commission of the United States of America to the Brazil centennial exposition.

Published and processed reports of research in foods, human nutrition, and home economics at the land-grant institutions; a list.

Mode of access: Internet.

Dynamic programming and mathematical economics.

"Prepared for United States Air Force Project Rand."

A method for presentation of cost estimates and process economics as recommended by the Atomic Energy Commission /

"July 26, 1956."

Technology change and the economics of silvicultural investment /

"August 1993."

Personal and family living and home economics education,

"A summary of Education for personal and family living and its relation to home economics education, by Esther F. Segner and Ethel L. Cornell."

Zeitschrift für die gesamte Staatswissenschaft = Journal of institutional and theoretical economics.

Published: Tübingen : Mohr, <1985- >.

Farm and Home Week of the New York State Colleges of Agriculture and Home Economics and the Veterinary College at Cornell University.

Mode of access: Internet.

Report on the European Centre of Applied Agricultural and Demographic Statistics, held at Paris from 26 September to 20 December 1949 /

Mode of access: Internet.