Graduate Course Descriptions

The role of budgeting and linear programming in analyzing farm organization problems, theory of linear programming, linear program design, and analysis of linear programmed solutions to farm organization problems. Includes goal programming, multiple objective programming, risk programming, and financial modeling.

Legal problems and issues of unique importance to lawyers serving the agricultural sector. Representative topics include economic and environmental regulation of agriculture; organizing the farm business; financing agricultural production; marketing agricultural products; and managing agricultural risk.

Economic theory of industrial organization and performance applied to agricultural input, raw product, and processed product markets. Buyer market power at first-handler level, spatial markets, vertical integration and contract coordination, and organizational forms unique to agriculture.

Economic relationships among the forces that determine the demand, supply and prices for agricultural commodities, products, and factors of production within and across markers. Theoretical foundations reviewed covering individual consumer demand, commodity and factor markets and price determination. Empirical methods applied in analyzing demand, supply and prices, and the factors affecting them. Multiple projects, including interpreting the results, to reinforce understanding of economic behavior.

Equilibrium Analysis: Applications in business, finance, and economics. Market equilibria, accumulations, and economics. Optimization: profit, cost, and utility functions. Constrained optimization problems with utility functions. Constrained optimization problems in production and consumer allocations; Kuhn and Tucker conditions; static and dynamic input-output Models.

Introduction to approaches to agricultural economics research. Critical evaluation of agricultural economics literature. Identify an area of research interest and present a review of current literature in the area.

Optimization methods in economics, organized into modules, each of which introduces the fundamental methods used in the analysis of a particular class of economic problems. Each module is taught within the framework of consumer, firm, or social welfare optimization problems.

Static economic analysis of multi-variant agriculture response functions. Resource and enterprise choice, cost functions, resource evaluation, and size and scale economies.

Application of conceptual and empirical tools for analyzing resource problems. Both public and private dimensions of resource management are considered with emphasis on public policy. Economics of environmental quality, management of exhaustible and renewable resources, valuation of non-market goods and key elements of environmental policy analysis.

Designed for incoming M.S. students in Agricultural Economics and related fields. Topics include constrained and unconstrained optimization, Kuhn Tucker conditions, matrices and determinants, and mathematical statistics.

Analysis of microeconomic decision-making by individuals and firms with emphasis on consumer demand, production, cost and profit, market structure and the economics of games, uncertainty, and information.

A synthesis across the notion of "utility" as represented in traditional environmental and natural resource economics, "ecology" in ecological economics, and "community" in behavioral economics. Ideas from thermodynamics with a focus on renewable resources. Development, organization, and enhancement of eco-business, eco-industry, eco-government and eco-communities.

Introduction to economic tools and their application to the law. Overview of the principles of microeconomics and their application to various areas of private law (e.g., torts, contracts, property) and public law (e.g., environmental, constitutional, and criminal law & procedure).