Originally, farm management research and agricultural economics research were the
main area of emphasis in ARE. Over time, we have placed
increasingly greater weight on agricultural economics rather than farm management,
but agricultural economics has continued to be a major field in our department.
Some aspects we emphasize include:
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Risk and Inventory Management
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The Economics of Production and Technology
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Agricultural Labor
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Agriculture and the Environment
Agriculture is going through processes of a transition. Its share of the GNP has
been declining, yet it has become part of a large agribusiness sector that includes
input suppliers, major distributors, and manufacturers of value-added food and fiber
products. ARE is expanding and developing a program on agribusiness that emphasizes:
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Marketing
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Industrial Organization
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Contracts
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Finance
Two research approaches in Agriculture being taken:
- Advance the state of knowledge on general research issues and use
agriculture as a case study to
apply our general approaches. For example, ARE faculty have made important
contributions over the
years to general economic theory regarding decision making under uncertainty,
industrialization,
market power, contracts, marketing and other areas, and have applied these
new theories it to
problems of agriculture in California and around the world.
- Conduct research to address crucial, real-world problems California
agriculture, the United
States and the world. Reality is used for inspiration and that has lead to
new problem definitions
and analytical approaches. For example, ARE research on issues of water
management, pest control and
farm workers has contributed to major policy debates and resulted in new
analytical approaches.
The work in agribusiness and in agricultural economics is closely linked to
agricultural policy issues. We emphasize agricultural and environment issues. Our
research on agricultural technologies is closely linked to problems addressed in
Intellectual Property Rights and innovation fields. While we mostly concentrate in
California and developed countries, the
methodologies we develop apply to developing countries and are important for
development. Applied econometrics techniques are developed and applied in a lot of our
work. Finally, agriculture is a global industry and our research in agribusiness and
agricultural economics has a strong overlap with the international economic field.
Copyright 2006, UC Regents,
Please send comments or questions about this site to
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