This book showcases the power of economic principles to explain and predict issues and current events in the food, agricultural, agribusiness, international trade, natural resources and other sectors. The result is an agricultural economics textbook that provides students and instructors with a clear, up-to-date, and straightforward approach to learning how a market-based economy functions, and how to use simple economic principles for improved decision making. While the primary focus of the book is on microeconomic aspects, agricultural economics has expanded over recent decades to include issues of macroeconomics, international trade, agribusiness, environmental economics, natural resources, and international development. Hence, these topics are also provided with significant coverage.

For junior/senior undergraduates in a variety of fields such as economics, business administration, applied mathematics and statistics, and for graduate students in quantitative masters programs such as MBA and MA/MS in economics. A student-friendly approach to understanding forecasting. Knowledge of forecasting methods is among the most demanded qualifications for professional economists, and business people working in either the private or public sectors of the economy. The general aim of this textbook is to carefully develop sophisticated professionals, who are able to critically analyze time series data and forecasting reports because they have experienced the merits and shortcomings of forecasting practice.

Envisioning a socio-economic utopia, A. P. Giannini was not a typical banking tycoon. With a socially enlightened heart, he made the American dream a reality. Founding the Bank of Italy for poor immigrant families, he wanted to overcome the barriers put in place by the banking elite to fulfill the dreams of "little guys."

Examines the economic underworld of migrant farm workers, the aged, minority groups, and other economically underprivileged groups.

Historical account of the social conflict between agricultural workers and agribusiness, and the role of state intervention in California, USA - analyses agricultural trade unionism since 1870, immigration of Chinese, Japanese, Mexicans and Filipinos, and its regulation; examines the economic recession of the 1930s, rise of rural worker organizations, internal migration, and state-enrolled contract labour; reports on the formation of the United Farm Workers and its struggle for trade union recognition, opposition, and state mediation. Bibliography.

After all the research on agricultural risk to date, the treatment of risk in agricultural research is far from harmonious. Many competing risk models have been proposed. Some new methodologies are largely untested. Some of the leading empirical methodologies in agricultural economic research are poorly suited for problems with aggregate data where risk averse behavior is less likely to be important. This book is intended to (i) define the current state of the literature on agricultural risk research, (ii) provide a critical evaluation of economic risk research on agriculture to date and (iii) set a research agenda that will meet future needs and prospects. This type of research promises to become of increasing importance because agricultural policy in the United States and elsewhere has decidedly shifted from explicit income support objectives to risk-related motivations of helping farmers deal with risk. Beginning with the 1996 Farm Bill, the primary set of policy instruments from U.S. agriculture has shifted from target prices and set aside acreage to agricultural crop insurance. Because this book is intended to have specific implications for U.S. agricultural policy, it has a decidedly domestic scope, but clearly many of the issues have application abroad. For each of the papers and topics included in this volume, individuals have been selected to give the strongest and broadest possible treatment of each facet of the problem. The result is this comprehensive reference book on the economics of agricultural risk.