Estimates of crop supply response to price have a long history in agricultural economics. The primary contribution of this dissertation is to estimate the short-run (1-year) and long-run (5- to 10-year) acreage response to price for corn and soybeans. I characterize the dynamics of aggregate supply response by aggregating a field-level conceptual model of crop decisions with rotation incentives across heterogeneous fields. The model indicates that the long-run response is likely to be smaller than the short-run response. The econometric model exploits crop data, in the form of pixels, derived from satellite imagery for Illinois (1999-2010) and Iowa and Indiana (2000-2010). To approximate fields as the unit of analysis, I use Common Land Unit boundaries from the Farm Service Agency. Expected per bushel crop revenues are the sum of a futures price, an expected loan deficiency payment, and an expected basis obtained from 93 market locations. Soil and precipitation data are spatially merged to the crop data. The field-level dataset contains approximately 1 million observations per year. I argue that previous estimates of aggregate acreage response to price have been biased due to the use of aggregate data and pooled estimators (i.e., estimating a heterogeneous coefficient with a single parameter). The bias from aggregation occurs because aggregating a dynamic model results in a different dynamic structure at the aggregate level, thus the model is misspecified with a single lagged dependent variable. The pooling bias occurs because the coefficient on the lagged dependent variable captures the variation in the price response. When the price of corn increases, fields that have a larger price response are more likely to plant corn in the current year, but they are also more likely to have planted corn the previous year since prices are positively autocorrelated. I avoid these sources of bias by using disaggregate crop data and estimating coefficients that differ by soil regimes. Using the field-level data, I estimate the own-price acreage elasticity for corn as 0.52 in the short run and 0.34 in the long run. I estimate the own-price acreage elasticity for soybeans as 0.31 in the short run and 0.23 in the long run. In contrast, estimates with county-level data for the same region and time period indicate that the long-run elasticities are larger than the short-run elasticities.

Abstracts of dissertations available on microfilm or as xerographic reproductions.