Agvocates Could Face New Speech Tax

In a previous Agweb post I pointed out how new social media technology has allowed farmers and industry advocates to take a stand in great numbers against many short sighted views and elitist agendas. I’m not sure this would have been possible with traditional media.

The problem is many commentators only like to talk about having intellectual discussions about the issues they support (climate change, biotechnology, soda taxes, gun control, regulation, bailouts, stimulus) but they never actually want to engage in discussions about them. That way, they can always claim ownership of 'science' and 'intellect' but never show their cards revealing how empirically depraved their policies really are. The recent media coverage (more like libelous slander) and discussion about Rand Paul is a case in point.

In a recent TIME magazine article Thomas Woods illustrates the problem:

"It is true that there are certain things that libertarians believe that will seem just shocking and scandalous to most people unless we're given 10 minutes to explain ourselves, but that's about nine minutes more than anyone in modern politics gets.”

Instead of engaging Rand Paul in a discussion about constitutional principles and economic theory critics in the media preferred to limit the conversation to a proxy name calling session that left the public with impressions of extremism and racism. With traditional media, it is very difficult to get the whole story. We’ve seen this lot in agriculture with celebrity authors and novelty film makers in how they depict the industry.(like the recent articles in TIME magazine, movies like King Corn, and HBO specials on factory farms) But with the new liberated social media, lots of viewpoints can be shared and evidence can be vetted.This is likely reason so many Americans turn to alternative media for their news, as indicated by a Zogby poll back in 2008 that found:

(the) “Internet is the top source of news for nearly half of Americans; Survey finds two-thirds dissatisfied with the quality of journalism” and “67% View Traditional Journalism as “Out of Touch”

A genuinely educated electorate (thanks to alternative media) easily finds flaws in tired political tactics. As I mentioned in a past post, politicians are starting to be held accountable for making up their own facts to support things like soda taxes and climate change legislation. At first alternative media was embraced by many politicians, thinking that enlightened minds would translate into overwhelming support (and money) for their policies. Now politicians and commentators have realized that free speech and 'liberated minds' could make it difficult to force feed policy agendas to voters armed with information. One thing this has also shown is how robust and competitive the market for news and information has become with new technology. This undermines any logical support for free speech infringing ideas like imposing the 'fairness doctrine' on talk radio. In response we are starting to see lots of ideas proposed to get a handle on the mass use of alternative media in the exercise of free speech.

From a recent article in the Washington Times:

"The bureaucracy sees it as a problem that the Internet has introduced a wealth of information options to consumers, forcing media companies to adapt and experiment to meet changing market needs."

"In other words, government policy would encourage a tax on websites like the Drudge Report... Such a tax would hit other news aggregators, such as Digg, Fark and Reddit,"

"A 5 percent tax on consumer electronic devices such as iPads, Kindles and laptops ..Other taxes might be levied on the radio and television spectrum, advertising and cell phones."

Already, hidden taxes on data have been incorporated into past proposed federal budgets. An article from Reuters last year indicates that yearly fees for spectrum licenses are proposed to rise 1000% over the next decade.

With increased use of alternative media, falling poll numbers, and an electoral war being waged against incumbent candidates, alternative media has become America’s next great villain. Perhaps in the minds of the Cass Sunstein’s of the world it needs its own version of a sin tax to nudge us into viewing only government approved websites and blogs.

‘Congress shall make no law .. abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble.’ Constitution of the United States

References:

Obama proposes to boost public airwaves fees

WASHINGTON Reuters

Thu Feb 26, 2009 4:48pm

FTC floats Drudge tax

Journalism can reinvent itself without government 'help'

The Washington Times June 4,2010

How the Pauls (Ron and Rand) Are Reshaping Politics

TIME By Michael Crowley May 27,2010

Superimposed Overlapping Kernal Density Plots

Below is a histogram of Garst corn yields (simulated data) and KDE plots for Round Up Ready (RR) non RR and all plots superimposed in one graph. (click to enlarge)




The R package Rattle will do this via the R Data Miner Gui, but I wanted to know how to do it without having to pull up the GUI each time. I thought the code would be more difficult than what it was, but it didn't take me long to figure it out.

When reading the documentation provided by the Data Mining Survivor guide, or one of these sources, I remember authors talking about how useful the Rattle log would be for learning R. I didn't think I'd learn much R this way, but I've been very surprised. For this graphic it was just a matter of copying code from the log and pasting into the R scripting window and making a few changes.

Government's Boot On Our Throats: How American is That?

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Recently our political leaders have been using some very harsh and vitriolic language in reference to citizens and private corporations, such as “we will keep our boot on the throat of BP” (YouTube video). Of course BP is a foreign company, but many Americans work for and depend on its products. Of course BP is in the middle of what could be one of history’s worst environmental disasters, but is that sort of language appropriate considering the government’s contributions both leading up to the disaster and the sluggish response?

By recently giving that very oil rig an award for safety, capping liabilities for drillers, and subsidizing the cleanup (funded by a 1 cent per barrel tax funded by oil companies) the government once again set up a roulette game encouraging risky behavior. And just like the financial crisis, when businesses respond to the governments risk taking incentives we get a crisis on our hands. And, just like with the financial crisis, it looks like the government’s response is going to be more corporate handouts and incentives for more risk taking. We saw the same thing in the auto industry as well.

From Breitbart “Responding to the massive BP oil spill, Congress is getting ready to quadruple—to 32 cents a barrel—a tax on oil used to help finance cleanups. The increase would raise nearly $11 billion over the next decade.”

Incentivizing more risky behavior, except with a much higher tax that will likely be passed on to you and me- so now if this goes through the government will be putting its boot on our throats every time we fill up.

But let’s not stop with BP. In recent headlines we see that government is putting its boot on the throat of a farmer near the Canadian border through eminent domain, taking a portion of land critical to their dairy operation.

“We have a buyer holding a gun to our head saying you have to sell or else.’’ “It’s like taking a leg off a stool. If you reduce the hay, you reduce the herd; if you reduce the herd, you immediately affect the viability of the farm,’’ Brian Rainville said. “Last year, the farm lost money. Right now, we are hanging on by our fingernails.’’ (Boston Globe)
With proposed cap and trade, legislation like the Clean Water Restoration Act ( which hasn’t passedas far as I know but keeps reincarnating itself under different names) , attacking farmers for obesity and health care problems (link Beef Magazine), proposed tax increases on thousands of farms, and the continual onslaught of biotech regulations, eventually it looks like the government’s boot is going to come down on one American farmer after another. It may not happen publicly though until they have taxed and regulated the industry into bankruptcy or some crisis occurs, so just like with the auto industry, the financial industry, and the oil spill, they can walk in and act like they had nothing to do with it and say 'we'll keep our boot on their throat until this is fixed.' How American is that?

REFERENCES:

David Filipov, Globe Staff / May 17, 2010 Vt. farmer draws a line at US bid to bolster border (link)

Oil tax increase would help pay to clean up spills

May 24 04:20 PM US/Eastern
By STEPHEN OHLEMACHER
Associated Press Writer

Beef Magazine (online) Nov 2, 2008 By: Joe Roybal

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AP IMPACT: Fed'l inspections on rig not as claimed

By JUSTIN PRITCHARD, Associated Press Writer Justin Pritchard, Associated Press Writer – Sun May 16,

(link)

Gulf Oil Spill and the Role of Government

In the context of the current oil spill disaster in the Gulf, have we learned anything about disaster response since Katrina? Is one administration more to blame than the other? Are there parallels between the two scenarios?

Many of the major problems with the government’s response to Hurricane Katrina were not administration specific. In the journal Public Choice, Russel Sobel and Peter Leeson point out that many of the problems that plagued the government’s response to hurricane Katrina are endemic to government in general. They pointed out 6 major issues ( summarized below)

1) The tragedy of the anti-commons ( layered bureaucracy)
2) Type II error bias (over cautiousness)
3) Political manipulation of disaster relief
4) Information Deficiencies- getting timely and accurate info about peoples preferences and needs
5) Glory seeking by government officials
6) Short sightedness effect and bias in government decision making

Public Choice theory involves the application of the tools of economic analysis to government and non-market behavior ( for a more detailed description of these problems and public choice analysis see here Government and Public Choice ) Many public choice economists would agree that these problems are not easily corrected over night, and are such a part of government- as-usual that we should not be surprised to see the same failures repeated over and over. A major problem plaguing government is lack of information. Markets take partial bits of disaggregated information, based on tradeoffs related to the knowledge and preferences of millions of individuals, and utilize that information and provide incentives for individuals to produce results.
Government on the other hand, has to rely on poor incentive structures (pointed out by items 1-6 above) and bases decisions on the limited knowledge and preferences of a few voters, elected representatives, policy ‘experts’ or appointed bureaucrats or 'czars'. Government’s capacity to make quick decisions or carry out complex non-defense related operations is severely limited by a large deficit of information compared to the private sector. This largely explains the superior response of the private sector (like Wal-Mart and Home Depot) to disaster relief after Katrina compared to government agencies.

How does this relate to the current gulf coast oil spill? Was the accident the result of negligence on the part of the privately owned company BP? There is no need to harp on this issue, because according to previous law, BP will be held responsible for any damages they are found responsible for.

More importantly, what about relief efforts? Despite well laid out response plans, why was the government so delayed in their response (see Despite plan, not a single fire boom on hand on Gulf Coast at time of oil spill - Mississippi Press) ? Can the delayed and faltered response be due to the same problems that plagued us after Katrina?

The resources that need to be brought to bear for a hurricane response are probably much more vast and broad than an oil spill. It seems likely that an oil spill would require very technical and specific knowledge to mitigate. Who possesses this knowledge and has command of the resources necessary to bring to bear relief? Typically markets solve these resource and information coordination problems every day via the price system. Are there regulatory barriers in place that would prevent a private sector response?

We have seen with the financial crisis that government actually played a major role by distorting the self correcting and disciplining signals of the market. We found that the government is pretty good at encourageing excessive risk taking and feeding corporate greed. Is it possible that we are seeing another instance of government failure in the oil spill response efforts or possibly even in the root cause of the spill?

There is some inclination that this may be true- from the coordination problem blog post 'Oil Spills, Incentives, and the Economic Way of Thinking':

"Walker's implication, and it's probably right, is that with a liability cap (beyond the clean up costs), the costs of any spill are less than they would be otherwise, giving firms reason, at least on the margin, to be willing to tolerate more risk of such a spill and reducing their expenditures on prevention measures, again at least on the margin."

These are questions to consider prior to recklessly embracing wild regulatory solutions. (already some people have begun attacking the 'Drill Baby Drill' mantra without considering all of the evidence) As we have seen with the response to the financial crisis- bailouts, financial reform, stimulus- without considering the evidence over emotional rhetoric, we are likely just setting ourselves up for 'disaster.'

References:

Despite plan, not a single fire boom on hand on Gulf Coast at time of oil spill
By Ben Raines
May 03, 2010, 12:09PM Missisippi Press

Government’s response to Hurricane Katrina: A public choice
analysis RUSSELL S. SOBEL & PETER T. LEESON
Public Choice (2006) 127: 55–73

More Handouts to WallStreet

Leading up to the financial crisis we saw the government manipulating markets by socially planning interest rates through the fed, which created excessive growth in the housing market and speculation. Even after warnings by economists about the dangers of the current stance of monetary policy, investors continued to take on more risk, partly because they knew the fed would attempt to engineer a soft landing once the bubble burst, partly because government sponsored organizations like Freddie and Fannie would continue to take on more of private sector risk, and partly because of regulatory mandates that such as the community reinvestment act ( which economists warned us about from the beginning).

Despite Wall Street being the most regulated industry in the U.S. economy, these government interventions led to one of the worst financial meltdowns we've seen since the depression. In response, the government implemented a bailout scheme (TARP) which has enraged voters across the country. This was despite many alternative solutions such as speed bankruptcy or debt to equity conversions.

Now, congress is planning a financial reform package. While commentators are claiming that this is a way to 'punish' Wall Street and prevent the next crisis (based on the false assumptions that the crisis was due only to excessive greed and very complicated derivatives), it is nothing of the sort. It is nothing more than another handout staked on taxpayer dollars.

In a recent article from Bloomburg news we find the following:

"Government rules will establish quasi-monopolies, and discourage competition. In exchange, the affected firms will be exposed to constant bureaucratic meddling, but will have the ability to manage this by influencing political appointments.. The Dodd bill will establish a set of companies that will be implicitly established as too big to fail, or TBTF. These firms will, according to Plosser, have an advantage: “when stock and bondholders of TBTF firms win, they profit, but when they lose, they become eligible for a government bailout.This will lower the cost of capital for the firms so designated, since lenders will understand that the U.S. government will be there should calamity ensue. If you lend to a little guy, you lose if he runs into trouble. If you lend to a big guy, you get your money back from taxpayers."

And we see that Goldman Sachs' stock prices continue to climb and we have yet to address the root causes of the financial crisis. Instead, it has become an excuse for doling out more political favors at the taxpayer's expense, and forwarding political agendas. In other words, more of the same failed policies that led to the crisis in the first place. Lots of ideas are on the table for responsible reforms, such as changing capital requirements,convertible debt arrangements, and cranking down on discretionary monetary policy. But these reforms don't as easily enrich special interests by picking winners and losers by having government reduce their competition and guarantee their profits.

The End of Earth Day Prejudices

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With earth day conversations going on this week across the country, just like every year, modern agriculture is likely not to get an accurate portrayal by some.

Fortunately, I’ve noticed leading up to earth day this year, farmers have started getting media coverage taking a stand in great numbers against many short sighted views and elitist agendas including attacks from point of view journalism, celebrity authors, and novelty film makers that have cleverly crafted arguments against 'industrial' farms, while stealthily undermining the practices of most family farmers. What’s different than before could be changes in technology. Politicians are starting to be held accountable for making up their own facts to support things like soda taxes and climate change legislation, and some businesses are starting to be held accountable for their 'bandwagon' actions they take without checking the facts first. Some examples from the past year follow:

The Omnivore’s Delusion: Against the Agri-intellectuals

By Blake Hurst- The American July 30 2009

"He quieted and asked me what kind of farming I do. I told him, and when he asked if I used organic farming, I said no, and left it at that. I didn’t answer with the first thought that came to mind, which is simply this: I deal in the real world, not superstitions… He was a businessman, and I’m sure spends his days with spreadsheets, projections, and marketing studies. He hasn’t used a slide rule in his career and wouldn’t make projections with tea leaves or soothsayers. He does not blame witchcraft for a bad quarter, or expect the factory that makes his product to use steam power instead of electricity, or horses and wagons to deliver his products instead of trucks and trains. But he expects me to farm like my grandfather….. He thinks farmers are too stupid to farm sustainably, too cruel to treat their animals well, and too careless to worry about their communities, their health, and their families...The most delicious irony is this: the parts of farming that are the most “industrial” are the most likely to be owned by the kind of family farmers that elicit such a positive response from the consumer. Corn farms are almost all owned and managed by small family farmers. "

Farm official: Elitists’ efforts would mean more hungry people
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Agrinews Online

“The elitists have been able to put in place zealots who are causing proposed regulations to come down the pike that will affect production agriculture more than ever,” he said. “They are trying to carry out their concepts, their ideas, of what needs to be done to forge what they perceive as a lifestyle that everybody should participate in.”

"Attacks on the toolboxes that help farmers increase productivity are at the top of the list. ...The controversial issues of global warming and climate change and international indirect land use are issues on which elitists are focusing as a way of imposing more regulations on production agriculture."

Food, Inc., discussion draws 50 in Fergus Falls

Agrinews- Dec 10,2009

"It's not telling the whole story," said the crop consultant and former farmer. "I think it was quite biased. I am an advocate for agriculture and I support all of agriculture. But this isn't telling the whole story."

Farmer Cynthia Johnson agreed.

"I substitute teach in the school and ag is not painted a beautiful picture in any of the textbooks," she said.

Perhaps some of the most effective methods that farmers and ag supporters have used involve social media like twitter and facebook.

Pilot Travel Centers pulls support of HSUS

Brownfield Ag News March 1, 2010

“after discovering that Pilot Travel Centers was making donations to HSUS, hundreds of farmers mobilized on Twitter to flood the brand’s Facebook page in protest. “

And froma blog post by Josh Morton:

“Self-proclaimed 'agvocates' took less than 24 hours to organize and inundate the company with calls for change.”

Ultimately Pilot changed their policy as a result.

The same could be said for a similar issue for Yellow Tail wine:

Farmers sway companies to end HSUS sponsorship

Ohio Farm Bureau News . March 26,2010

“In a matter of days, “Yellow Fail”, a Facebook page dedicated to the protest, gained 3,000 fans, and more than 8,000 people watched Hadrick’s video. “ (on youtube)

And farmers and others in the agricultural industry as well as concerned consumers aren’t just picking what's popular at the moment. Many are constantly ‘agvocating’ and discussing issues related to agriculture on a regular basis through weekly tweet sessions like ‘#Agchat’ or ‘#Foodchat’ on twitter or just passing on the latest scientific research by sharing a link via their facebook page.

This week, just like every year during earth day, there may be a lot of conversations and statements made convicting modern agriculture of many things, but more than ever farmers and advocates have some powerful tools they can use to help set the record straight. To quote again from one of the articles above, in the past Earth Day Elitists may have presumed that “farmers are too stupid to farm sustainably, too cruel to treat their animals well, and too careless to worry about their communities” but they can’t get away with those prejudices anymore.

Taxation Without Representation

Some people have claimed that Tea Party activists are ignorant of history because the original Boston Tea Party was a response to taxation without representation, while it seems obvious that we all have representation.

The issue is not historical ignorance, but constitutional ignorance, and it's not on behalf of Tea Party goers. When we elect our senators and representatives to represent us, they are to represent us in all things authorized by the specifically enumerated powers in the Constitution. In essence, the Constitution represents our common will and personal interests.

When our elected officials violate our will by voting for policies that are contrary to Constitutional principles they are no longer representing us in good faith and we have lost the most important representation of our national will, the Constitution.
When we have to pay taxes to support these policies, we have literally, taxation without representation. They are no longer representing our interests, but serving special interests or their own.

Some will go so far as to say that language in the Constitution relating to promoting the general welfare and regulating interstate commerce assure us that many of these questionable policies are Constitutional. However, this is based on court cases like Helvering v. Davis (1937) or Wickard v. Filburn (1942) , but both of which were based on the dubious logic of supreme court justices, making heroic interpretations beyond the cognitive meaning of the actual Constitutional text. This is what economist Thomas Sowell has referred to as ‘the quiet repeal of the American revolution’ and represents a transfer of power away from the people to government and unelected judges and bureaucrats. True taxation with representation implies that our elected officials represent us only in those matters that are authorized by the Constitution.

Monsanto Anti-trust Case

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Recently the Justice department has begun investigations into alleged anti-trust violations by Monsanto. This has helped fuel a lot of already hyped discontent with one of the world’s leaders in biotech solutions for sustainable agriculture. But why are people so anti-Monsanto and are these concerns unfounded? What makes Monsanto so powerful and so threatening in critics’ minds?

Despite the numerous amounts of research attesting to the safety of consuming Biotech foods many people still seek bans or increased regulation. Biotechnology largely represents the intersection of technology and capitalism. Since Monsanto is a leader in the biotech industry, it makes a great target for luddites and critics of market forces in general.

Now, truthfully, Monsanto did not come to be in a perfectly competitive purely capitalistic free market economy. No industry or corporation can make that claim in today’s heavily interventionist world, replete with regulations and public- private partnerships and the influence of special interests. Henry Miller and Gregory Conko point this out in their piece 'Freeing the Biotech Revolution:

'sadly, instead of demanding scientifically sound, risk-based regulation, some biotechnology firms have lobbied for this same kind of discriminatory, excessive government regulation in order to gain short-term advantages'

What is ironic is that many of the people cheering on the justice department’s investigation of Monsanto are the same people that want increased regulation and control of the economy in general, and especially the biotech industry. Why is this ironic? Because, these very proposals are what lead to ever more concentration and consolidation. Again Miller and Conko make an excellent point:

'In the end, EPA and the USDA regulatory policies place federal bureaucrats in the middle of virtually all field trials of gene-spliced plants, spelling disaster for small businesses and academic institutions whose scientists lack the resources to comply with burdensome, expensive, unnecessary regulation. The cost of field-testing gene-spliced plants is as much as 20-fold higher than for virtually identical plants crafted with older, less precise genetic techniques.' -Regulation, Summer 2003

Specifically, the mergers and acquisitions and increased concentration that we have seen in the ag biotech industry are largely the result of attempts to take advantage of economies of scale. Increased regulatory costs increase up front sunk costs. According to basic microeconomic theory, and Fulton and Giannakas (2001) research, these increased sunk costs create the possibilities of economies of scope and scale and increased industry consolidation in the biotech sector. Ollinger and Fernandez-Cornejo (1998) found that in the chemical pesticide industry that regulatory costs fell heavier on smaller firms and led to more concentration and fewer firms.

Those crying the loudest about more regulation have to accept that with it comes increased concentration and less competition. The policies they support help create the Monsantos of the world.

Defining and Measuring the Social Costs of Monopoly Power

 The most ardent critics that want to build cases for ‘busting up’ big businesses often commit the fallacy of relying only on static analysis. Instead of looking ahead (which would be dynamic analysis) they maintain a short sighted, often politically motivated agenda. This could make society worse off in the long run.

Regulations can sometimes explicitly create monopolies (like the U.S. postal service) or they can create them indirectly like I mentioned above. I don’t think careful consideration is always given to the tradeoffs involved in those cases. However, tradeoffs are widely recognized when it comes to intellectual property rights and biotechnology. With intellectual property rights (like patents) temporary monopoly power is granted. This certainly may come with temporary social costs, but it allows researchers and investors to recoup their costs and provides incentives for increased R&D (although this point is debated among some economists, say for instance Stephan Kinsella's analysis here). In the long run, based on a dynamic view of monopoly, this paves the way for innovation in particular industries and improved standards of living for society at large. (For example biotechnology makes food more abundant, safer, leads to increased biodiversity, and is more sustainable see here for an annotated bibliography supporting these claims). Further, even if the tradeoffs of IP are not net positive, what we often find is that in the long run, technological change (driven by market forces) often leads to innovations that erode the market power of incumbent firms and their former technological advantages. In the short run there are also incentives for technology dissemination between firms. 

In his post The Seeds of an Antitrust Disaster , Geoffrey Manne makes a great point related to intellectual property rights: 

“But, the AP found, access to Monsanto’s genes comes at a cost, and with plenty of strings attached. I should hope so. If Monsanto is giving away its technology and failing to protect its IP it is in serious trouble with its shareholders, among others. And never mind (and the AP reporter doesn’t) that Monsanto apparently licenses its technology broadly (I assume that 200 companies is broad in this market) rather than keeping it locked up for itself (the usual complaint about firms exercising their IP rights). Isn’t this how technology markets are supposed to work?”

Monsanto’s behavior appears to be consistent with what we would expect from a dynamically efficient system of intellectual property rights. While people may have different opinions about the optimal time period for setting patents, or even debate the merits of IP, that is different than punishing a company for its success based on a short term ‘static’ analysis of their behavior.  

Some research even indicates that under the current regime, farmers can still benefit in the face of a monopolist supplier. When looking at the gains from biotechnology for Bt Cotton, research in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics found : 

“The welfare framework explicitly recognizes that research protected by intellectual property rights generates monopoly profits, and makes it possible to partition these rents among consumers, farmers, and the innovating input firms. We calculate a total increase in world surplus of $240.3 million for 1996. Of this total, the largest share (59%) went to U.S. farmers.” 

In conclusion, if we are concerned about monopoly power and market concentration in agriculture, we have to ask ourselves what policies are empowering these firms? It seems the loudest voices cheering on the government’s investigation of Monsanto also support the very policies that lead to industry consolidation to begin with. This seems all too familiar. The financial industry is the most heavily regulated industry in the United States. Add to that the interventions of the Federal Reserve through centrally planned interest rates, and we have created an industry incentivized to take extraordinary risks despite  or as a result of in some cases) all of the regulations. When the industry came crashing down in 2008, many of the same advocates whose policies helped create the financial crisis also were the loudest to blame the industry for its ‘greed’ and ‘short sightedness.’ I think we are seeing something very similar with Monsanto, and I hope it doesn’t become an industry wide phenomenon. A financial crisis is bad enough, but we don’t need a food crisis. 

References

 Henry I Miller and Gregory Conko. 'Freeing the Biotech Revolution.' CEI Monthly Planet. November 2004. The Competitive Enterprise Institute Volume 17 No 9

Henry Miller and Gregory Conko. 'Bootleggers and Biotechs.' Regulation. Summer 2003

Fulton, M., & Giannakas, K. (2001). Agricultural biotechnology and industry structure. AgBioForum, 4(2), 137-151.

Surplus Distribution from the Introduction of a Biotechnology Innovation Am. J. Agr. Econ. (2000) 82 (2): 360-369.

Differential Pricing and Efficiency by Hal Varian
First Monday, Volume 1, Number 2 - 5 August 1996Differential Pricing and Efficiency

Ollinger, M. and Fernandez-Cornejo, J. (1998). Sunk costs and regulation in the US pesticide

industry. International Journal of Industrial Organization, 16, 139-168.