Production Economics
AGEC 740

NORTH CAROLINA A&T STATE UNIVERSITY
DEPT. OF AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS AND RURAL SOCIOLOGY

SPRING SEMESTER

Instructor: Anthony Yeboah; Ph.D. Economics

24-A C.H. Moore Agricultural Research Facility

Phone:(336) 334-7070

Fax: (336) 334-7658

yeboaha@ncat.edu

Required Texts:

• John O. Doll & Frank Orazen, Production Economics, Theory with Applications.
• Jack R. Anderson, John L. Dillon and Brian Hardaker, Agricultural Decision Analysis
• Alpha C. Chiang, Fundamental Methods of Mathematical Economics.

Additional Texts:

• Earl O. Heady, Economics of Agricultural Production and Resource Use.
• Earl O. Heady & John L. Dillon, Agricultural Production Functions

Course Objectives: The student will learn the basic principles upon which problems in agricultural production and resource use can be analyzed. The method employed is one of isolating and setting forth fundamentals round which discussions in production economics can be centered. Emphasis is, however, placed on fundamentals in respect to production and resource relationships, the conditions under which efficiency is attained, and the behavior patterns of persons who serve as managers and administrators of agricultural resources.

1. Agricultural Production Functions, Optimization and Farm Equilibrium.

2. Cost Function and Family Farm Theory.

3. Returns to Scale and Imputation Problems in Agriculture

4. Allocation of Resources and Agricultural Production Possibilities, Continuous Functions

5. Resource Acquisition, Tenure, Leasing Systems and Efficiency

6. Allocation of Resources, Static Farm Planning and Linear Programming.

7. Extension of Linear Programming in Agricultural Application: Variable Coefficients and Prices, Sensitivity Analysis, Integer Models, Programming Models of Supply Response.

8. Problems of Time, Intertemporal Allocation of Resources and conservation in Agriculture.

9. Risk Uncertainty, Decision Strategies and Resource Use.

10. Uncertainty: Capital Supply and Demand, Investment and Efficiency and Innovation.

11. Simulation of Production, Decisions & Response in Agriculture.

12. Interregional Competition, the Spatial Allocation of Resources Land and Water Use and the Environment in Agriculture.

Linear Models

Nonlinear Models

13. Supply Response, Economic Development, World Food Potentials and Policy in Agriculture

14. Resource Demand, Structural Transformation, Technological Advance, Environmental Impacts and Economic Growth of Agriculture.

15. Allocative Efficiency, Capacity, and Income Problems of the Agriculture Industry.

16. Policy and Income Problems of Technical Resource Immobility, Change, Growth, and Exports of Agriculture.