Joseph Cooper | USDA Economic Research Service (original) (raw)

Papers by Joseph Cooper

Public amenities provided by a rural agricultural landscape, arising from open space and farm act... more Public amenities provided by a rural agricultural landscape, arising from open space and farm activity, are important to many citizens and policymakers. Widespread development of farmland in some parts of the country has spawned an expanding array of farmland protection programs by county, State, and Federal governments, as well as by nonprofit organizations. To investigate the relative importance of preserving different amenities, this report examines the enabling legislation of these programs across the 48 contiguous States, and the implementation of these programs in five Northeastern States (Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Vermont). The report also assesses how farmland protection programs fit into the broader array of rural land conservation programs.

As with the 2008 Farm Act, the 2012 Farm Act is likely to have some sort of revenue-based support... more As with the 2008 Farm Act, the 2012 Farm Act is likely to have some sort of revenue-based support for producers of qualifying crops. Much debate over the negotiations on the 2012 Farm Act focuses on new programs for providing producers with support payments covering "shallow losses" in revenue. The main goal of this paper is to develop an approach to examine the sensitivity of the farmer's downside risk protection and federal budgetary costs of marginal changes in the deductible in shallow loss program scenarios based on the Average Risk Coverage (ARC) program in the Senate's April 26th draft of the 2012 Farm Bill. We find that average payments are elastic with respect to the revenue program's coverage rate. In addition, using this approach, the paper compares payments and their impacts on farm revenue for county and farm level implementations of the revenue program. We find that based on expected payments and impacts on downside revenue risk, producers are lik...

Price in agricultural supply equations is usually the expected price. In general, models of agric... more Price in agricultural supply equations is usually the expected price. In general, models of agricultural supply response assume that their representation of producer expectations is correct. If this assumption is wrong, the supply response parameter will have embodied within it an estimate of the expected price distortion, biasing the estimated parameter. Furthermore, no effort has been made in existing models to allow for heterogeneous price expectations. In almost every supply model, one price estimate is used to represent the price expectations of hundreds or thousands of producers, which could masks a wide range behavior among heterogenous producers. Rather than assuming the model's representation of producer expectations is correct, the goal of this paper is to use revealed producer behavior to assist in the estimation of producer's expected prices. To explicitly address producers' formation of the expected price, this study jointly estimates the supply equation and...

Agricultural chemicals and sediment from cropland may reduce the quality of America's surface... more Agricultural chemicals and sediment from cropland may reduce the quality of America's surface and ground water resources. The Clean Water Act stipulates that individual States are responsible for controlling agricultural nonpoint source pollution. Most State plans rely chiefly on education and technical assistance to promote the adoption of less polluting practices. Because profitability drives production decisions, these programs tend to be most successful when they promote inexpensive changes in existing practices. This report presents research findings on the success of incentive programs to control agricultural nonpoint source pollution.

This paper develops a stochastic model for estimating potential loan deficiency payments to U.S. ... more This paper develops a stochastic model for estimating potential loan deficiency payments to U.S. corn producers in a discrete-dynamic context. We minimize the potential for misspecification bias by using nonparametric and semi-nonparametric approaches as specification checks in the model. The model permits the forecast at planting time of the resulting empirical distribution of LDP payments for that crop year. Using this model, the paper examines the sensitivity of this distribution to changes in expected price levels.

This paper develops an approach to empirically demonstrate how the within-season distribution of ... more This paper develops an approach to empirically demonstrate how the within-season distribution of U.S. domestic commodity support for corn differs between current-style approaches of support and revenue-based support. From a purely economic standpoint, the results show the revenue-based payment scenarios to be preferable at the national level to the uncoordinated forms of support currently in use, even in a situation where the annual mean payments are set equal across the support scenarios. For revenue-based support, the variability around the total expected annual payment is lower, and perhaps more importantly, the probability of high payments is lower. These results suggest advantages to this type of support, both in terms of lower budgetary uncertainty for producers and the Federal government and in meeting multilateral commitments for limiting spending on domestic commodity support.

The current debate surrounding the 2012 Farm Act stresses cutting costs while maintaining, or eve... more The current debate surrounding the 2012 Farm Act stresses cutting costs while maintaining, or even strengthening, farmers' "safety net." One way to cut costs is to reduce or eliminate potential overlap of farm program payments. Using simulations, we explore the interaction between the Average Crop Revenue Election (ACRE) program and a revenue assurance (RA) crop insurance program for corn, soybean, and wheat farmers in IL, MN, and SD. Additionally, we examine whether receiving benefits from multiple programs (an RA program, the Supplemental Revenue (SURE) program, and an ad hoc disaster assistance program) distorts farmers' business decisions. We find overlap between ACRE and crop insurance, which could lead to budgetary savings if these two programs were to be integrated. Moreover, despite policymakers explicitly incorporating insurance indemnities into SURE payment calculations, access to both programs can alter behavior. Finally, in a counter-factual analysis, w...

Since the advent of the Supplemental Revenue Assistance Program (SURE) as a free supplement to cr... more Since the advent of the Supplemental Revenue Assistance Program (SURE) as a free supplement to crop insurance in the 2008 Farm Bill, shallow-loss policies-insurance that covers only the very top segment of losses-have become an area of increasing focus in the farm safety net. These policies provide coverage for smaller revenue losses in the range where revenues remain higher than the guarantee provided by crop revenue insurance, and are more politically palatable than direct payments in times of record-high farm revenues. While SURE is history, debate continues in Congress over a range of policy alternatives including deductible and coinsurance-style revenue insurance, area coverage, whole farm vs. single crop, and even price supports, all of which are heavily subsidized (Shields and Schnepf, 2013). With so many alternative insurance policies proposed for the new farm safety net, it is easy to assume that the exact risk-management features of each policy should drive the discussion....

Understanding how farmers respond to premium subsidies and other incentives to purchase crop insu... more Understanding how farmers respond to premium subsidies and other incentives to purchase crop insurance is fundamental to evaluating how changes in these incentives affect the use of federal crop insurance and thus the Federal savings that can be expected. We use contract-level data for corn enterprise units in 2008 and 2009 to examine how modifications to the out-of-pocket cost of crop insurance affect farmers' insurance coverage level decisions and government expenditures. Unlike previous studies that have examined this question, we use a specialized discrete choice framework, an ordered generalized extreme value (OGEV) model. This approach explicitly accounts for the natural ordering of the choice set from low to high coverage. Our results suggest a significant difference in the response to changes in the unit price of federal crop insurance for farmers that are observed to choose a low coverage level versus those that are observed to choose a high coverage level. This has sig...

An open-economy equilibrium model is derived to investigate the effects of energy policy on the U... more An open-economy equilibrium model is derived to investigate the effects of energy policy on the U.S. economy,with emphasis on corn-based ethanol.A second best policy of a fuel tax and ethanol subsidy is found to approximate fairly closely the welfare gains associated with the first best policy of an optimal carbon tax and tariffs on traded goods. The largest economic gains to the U.S. economy from these energy policies arise from their impact onU.S. terms of trade,particularly in the oil market. Conditional on the current fuel tax, an optimal ethanol mandate is superior to an optimal ethanol subsidy. Key words: biofuel policies, carbon tax, ethanol subsidy, gasoline tax, greenhouse gas emissions, mandates, renewable fuel standard, second best. JEL Classification: Q2, H2, F1. Two interrelated critical issues facing the United States and world economies are the dwindling supply of fossil fuels and the increas-ing emissions of carbon into the atmosphere. The U.S. dependence on imported...

Almost all applications of the Travel-Cost-Method demand function which include site quality vari... more Almost all applications of the Travel-Cost-Method demand function which include site quality variable(s) are multisite models. The results of this study serve as a note of warning that using the demand equation derived from multisite cross-sectional data to perform a benefit-cost analysis of changes in quality at a single site may not accurately predict the resulting change in the number of trips to that site. In this situation, estimates of the benefits of quality improvements may be unreliable. Key words: benefits, cross section, demand, fishing, quality, recreation, time series, travel cost model. To perform Benefit-Cost-Analysis (BCA) of changes in recreational site quality, such as improving water quality or facilities, it is nec-essary to know how the demand function shifts with changes in site quality. Since many ex-ogenously determined site quality variables change only by season or year, estimation of a coefficient on site quality usually must be performed using multisite c...

In particular, the simulation suggests a 2.4 percent increase in corn production, with increases ... more In particular, the simulation suggests a 2.4 percent increase in corn production, with increases in all US regions; however, most regional changes are minimal. The simulation also shows an increase in US corn prices of 17 percent. The potential changes in wheat production are fairly homogeneous across regions within plus or minus two percentage points, while soybean production is likely to fall marginally. The simulation also suggests larger regional impacts with attrition of production in some regions and augmentation in others, and thus further concentration of production. Changes in the livestock and feed sectors are also predicted to be limited throughout the US, with some variation at the regional levels. For example, while dairy production falls nationally, many regions exhibit increases in production. Swine production remains relatively unchanged, whereas changes in the beef sector vary by region. Within the parameters of the scenario, poultry production shows slight increase...

Price in agricultural supply equations is usually the expected price. In general, models of agric... more Price in agricultural supply equations is usually the expected price. In general, models of agricultural supply response assume that their representation of producer expectations is correct. If this assumption is wrong, the supply response parameter will have embodied within it an estimate of the expected price distortion, biasing the estimated parameter. Furthermore, no effort has been made in existing models to allow for heterogeneous price expectations. In almost every supply model, one price estimate is used to represent the price expectations of hundreds or thousands of producers, which could masks a wide range behavior among heterogenous producers. Rather than assuming the model’s representation of producer expectations is correct, the goal of this paper is to use revealed producer behavior to assist in the estimation of producer’s expected prices. To explicitly address producers’ formation of the expected price, this study jointly estimates the supply equation and the price e...

Yield variability can be significantly higher at the farm level than at more aggregated levels, i... more Yield variability can be significantly higher at the farm level than at more aggregated levels, including the county. However, due to a dearth of available farm level data, much stochastic analysis involving farm yields utilizes more aggregated yield data as a proxy for the farm level. We empirically evaluate farm-level variability using longitudinal farm level data sets available from the Kansas Farm Management Association and the Illinois Farm Business and Farm Management Association. For corn, soybeans, and wheat, we compare the farm level yield variability obtained from this data to that inferred from Federal crop insurance premiums. The farm management data exhibit lower yield variability than are implied by the crop insurance premiums.

This paper develops an approach to empirically demonstrate how the within-season distribution of ... more This paper develops an approach to empirically demonstrate how the within-season distribution of U.S. domestic commodity support for corn differs between current-style approaches of support and revenue-based support. From a purely economic standpoint, the results show the revenue-based payment scenarios to be preferable at the national level to the uncoordinated forms of support currently in use, even in a situation where the annual mean payments are set equal across the support scenarios. For revenue-based support, the variability around the total expected annual payment is lower, and perhaps more importantly, the probability of high payments is lower. These results suggest advantages to this type of support, both in terms of lower budgetary uncertainty for producers and the Federal government and in meeting multilateral commitments for limiting spending on domestic commodity support.

Microeconomics: Decision-Making under Risk & Uncertainty eJournal, 2019

Panel regressions are used to relate standardized county weather variables to yield outcomes in o... more Panel regressions are used to relate standardized county weather variables to yield outcomes in order to develop a crop disaster program for the top producing states of corn, soybeans, wheat, and cotton. Farm‐level simulations are used to draw yield realizations and provide realistic consistency between county, district, and state yields and national prices. The proposed crop disaster program is estimated to save between 3and3 and 3and4 billion per year relative to the current crop insurance program, a reduction of approximately 30% compared to the $10.06 billion in federal expenditures on the crop insurance program in 2016. The savings are realized though two main mechanisms: (1) Focusing agricultural support on systemic weather risk and excluding idiosyncratic risk; and (2) Reducing the administrative cost of the program by eliminating underwriting gains accruing to private companies currently participating in the delivery of crop insurance. The disadvantage of the crop disaster product...

Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, 1997

Using farmer responses to contingent valuation method (CVM) survey data in combination with actua... more Using farmer responses to contingent valuation method (CVM) survey data in combination with actual market data from four watershed regions in the United States, this study estimates the minimum incentives payments a farmer would accept in order to adopt more environmentally friendly “"best management practices"” (BMPs). Combining actual market data with the CVM data adds information to the analysis, thereby most likely increasing the reliability of the results compared to analyzing the contingent behavior survey response data only. Given the decision to adopt, the article also presents a pooled model for the number of acres enrolled in the BMPs as a function of the incentive payments. Adoption rates predicted with the combination data model are significantly higher over a wide range of offers than those predicted using the traditional discrete choice analysis with the hypothetical data only. Hence, using the traditional CVM analysis results to determine payments to attai...

Public amenities provided by a rural agricultural landscape, arising from open space and farm act... more Public amenities provided by a rural agricultural landscape, arising from open space and farm activity, are important to many citizens and policymakers. Widespread development of farmland in some parts of the country has spawned an expanding array of farmland protection programs by county, State, and Federal governments, as well as by nonprofit organizations. To investigate the relative importance of preserving different amenities, this report examines the enabling legislation of these programs across the 48 contiguous States, and the implementation of these programs in five Northeastern States (Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Vermont). The report also assesses how farmland protection programs fit into the broader array of rural land conservation programs.

As with the 2008 Farm Act, the 2012 Farm Act is likely to have some sort of revenue-based support... more As with the 2008 Farm Act, the 2012 Farm Act is likely to have some sort of revenue-based support for producers of qualifying crops. Much debate over the negotiations on the 2012 Farm Act focuses on new programs for providing producers with support payments covering "shallow losses" in revenue. The main goal of this paper is to develop an approach to examine the sensitivity of the farmer's downside risk protection and federal budgetary costs of marginal changes in the deductible in shallow loss program scenarios based on the Average Risk Coverage (ARC) program in the Senate's April 26th draft of the 2012 Farm Bill. We find that average payments are elastic with respect to the revenue program's coverage rate. In addition, using this approach, the paper compares payments and their impacts on farm revenue for county and farm level implementations of the revenue program. We find that based on expected payments and impacts on downside revenue risk, producers are lik...

Price in agricultural supply equations is usually the expected price. In general, models of agric... more Price in agricultural supply equations is usually the expected price. In general, models of agricultural supply response assume that their representation of producer expectations is correct. If this assumption is wrong, the supply response parameter will have embodied within it an estimate of the expected price distortion, biasing the estimated parameter. Furthermore, no effort has been made in existing models to allow for heterogeneous price expectations. In almost every supply model, one price estimate is used to represent the price expectations of hundreds or thousands of producers, which could masks a wide range behavior among heterogenous producers. Rather than assuming the model's representation of producer expectations is correct, the goal of this paper is to use revealed producer behavior to assist in the estimation of producer's expected prices. To explicitly address producers' formation of the expected price, this study jointly estimates the supply equation and...

Agricultural chemicals and sediment from cropland may reduce the quality of America's surface... more Agricultural chemicals and sediment from cropland may reduce the quality of America's surface and ground water resources. The Clean Water Act stipulates that individual States are responsible for controlling agricultural nonpoint source pollution. Most State plans rely chiefly on education and technical assistance to promote the adoption of less polluting practices. Because profitability drives production decisions, these programs tend to be most successful when they promote inexpensive changes in existing practices. This report presents research findings on the success of incentive programs to control agricultural nonpoint source pollution.

This paper develops a stochastic model for estimating potential loan deficiency payments to U.S. ... more This paper develops a stochastic model for estimating potential loan deficiency payments to U.S. corn producers in a discrete-dynamic context. We minimize the potential for misspecification bias by using nonparametric and semi-nonparametric approaches as specification checks in the model. The model permits the forecast at planting time of the resulting empirical distribution of LDP payments for that crop year. Using this model, the paper examines the sensitivity of this distribution to changes in expected price levels.

This paper develops an approach to empirically demonstrate how the within-season distribution of ... more This paper develops an approach to empirically demonstrate how the within-season distribution of U.S. domestic commodity support for corn differs between current-style approaches of support and revenue-based support. From a purely economic standpoint, the results show the revenue-based payment scenarios to be preferable at the national level to the uncoordinated forms of support currently in use, even in a situation where the annual mean payments are set equal across the support scenarios. For revenue-based support, the variability around the total expected annual payment is lower, and perhaps more importantly, the probability of high payments is lower. These results suggest advantages to this type of support, both in terms of lower budgetary uncertainty for producers and the Federal government and in meeting multilateral commitments for limiting spending on domestic commodity support.

The current debate surrounding the 2012 Farm Act stresses cutting costs while maintaining, or eve... more The current debate surrounding the 2012 Farm Act stresses cutting costs while maintaining, or even strengthening, farmers' "safety net." One way to cut costs is to reduce or eliminate potential overlap of farm program payments. Using simulations, we explore the interaction between the Average Crop Revenue Election (ACRE) program and a revenue assurance (RA) crop insurance program for corn, soybean, and wheat farmers in IL, MN, and SD. Additionally, we examine whether receiving benefits from multiple programs (an RA program, the Supplemental Revenue (SURE) program, and an ad hoc disaster assistance program) distorts farmers' business decisions. We find overlap between ACRE and crop insurance, which could lead to budgetary savings if these two programs were to be integrated. Moreover, despite policymakers explicitly incorporating insurance indemnities into SURE payment calculations, access to both programs can alter behavior. Finally, in a counter-factual analysis, w...

Since the advent of the Supplemental Revenue Assistance Program (SURE) as a free supplement to cr... more Since the advent of the Supplemental Revenue Assistance Program (SURE) as a free supplement to crop insurance in the 2008 Farm Bill, shallow-loss policies-insurance that covers only the very top segment of losses-have become an area of increasing focus in the farm safety net. These policies provide coverage for smaller revenue losses in the range where revenues remain higher than the guarantee provided by crop revenue insurance, and are more politically palatable than direct payments in times of record-high farm revenues. While SURE is history, debate continues in Congress over a range of policy alternatives including deductible and coinsurance-style revenue insurance, area coverage, whole farm vs. single crop, and even price supports, all of which are heavily subsidized (Shields and Schnepf, 2013). With so many alternative insurance policies proposed for the new farm safety net, it is easy to assume that the exact risk-management features of each policy should drive the discussion....

Understanding how farmers respond to premium subsidies and other incentives to purchase crop insu... more Understanding how farmers respond to premium subsidies and other incentives to purchase crop insurance is fundamental to evaluating how changes in these incentives affect the use of federal crop insurance and thus the Federal savings that can be expected. We use contract-level data for corn enterprise units in 2008 and 2009 to examine how modifications to the out-of-pocket cost of crop insurance affect farmers' insurance coverage level decisions and government expenditures. Unlike previous studies that have examined this question, we use a specialized discrete choice framework, an ordered generalized extreme value (OGEV) model. This approach explicitly accounts for the natural ordering of the choice set from low to high coverage. Our results suggest a significant difference in the response to changes in the unit price of federal crop insurance for farmers that are observed to choose a low coverage level versus those that are observed to choose a high coverage level. This has sig...

An open-economy equilibrium model is derived to investigate the effects of energy policy on the U... more An open-economy equilibrium model is derived to investigate the effects of energy policy on the U.S. economy,with emphasis on corn-based ethanol.A second best policy of a fuel tax and ethanol subsidy is found to approximate fairly closely the welfare gains associated with the first best policy of an optimal carbon tax and tariffs on traded goods. The largest economic gains to the U.S. economy from these energy policies arise from their impact onU.S. terms of trade,particularly in the oil market. Conditional on the current fuel tax, an optimal ethanol mandate is superior to an optimal ethanol subsidy. Key words: biofuel policies, carbon tax, ethanol subsidy, gasoline tax, greenhouse gas emissions, mandates, renewable fuel standard, second best. JEL Classification: Q2, H2, F1. Two interrelated critical issues facing the United States and world economies are the dwindling supply of fossil fuels and the increas-ing emissions of carbon into the atmosphere. The U.S. dependence on imported...

Almost all applications of the Travel-Cost-Method demand function which include site quality vari... more Almost all applications of the Travel-Cost-Method demand function which include site quality variable(s) are multisite models. The results of this study serve as a note of warning that using the demand equation derived from multisite cross-sectional data to perform a benefit-cost analysis of changes in quality at a single site may not accurately predict the resulting change in the number of trips to that site. In this situation, estimates of the benefits of quality improvements may be unreliable. Key words: benefits, cross section, demand, fishing, quality, recreation, time series, travel cost model. To perform Benefit-Cost-Analysis (BCA) of changes in recreational site quality, such as improving water quality or facilities, it is nec-essary to know how the demand function shifts with changes in site quality. Since many ex-ogenously determined site quality variables change only by season or year, estimation of a coefficient on site quality usually must be performed using multisite c...

In particular, the simulation suggests a 2.4 percent increase in corn production, with increases ... more In particular, the simulation suggests a 2.4 percent increase in corn production, with increases in all US regions; however, most regional changes are minimal. The simulation also shows an increase in US corn prices of 17 percent. The potential changes in wheat production are fairly homogeneous across regions within plus or minus two percentage points, while soybean production is likely to fall marginally. The simulation also suggests larger regional impacts with attrition of production in some regions and augmentation in others, and thus further concentration of production. Changes in the livestock and feed sectors are also predicted to be limited throughout the US, with some variation at the regional levels. For example, while dairy production falls nationally, many regions exhibit increases in production. Swine production remains relatively unchanged, whereas changes in the beef sector vary by region. Within the parameters of the scenario, poultry production shows slight increase...

Price in agricultural supply equations is usually the expected price. In general, models of agric... more Price in agricultural supply equations is usually the expected price. In general, models of agricultural supply response assume that their representation of producer expectations is correct. If this assumption is wrong, the supply response parameter will have embodied within it an estimate of the expected price distortion, biasing the estimated parameter. Furthermore, no effort has been made in existing models to allow for heterogeneous price expectations. In almost every supply model, one price estimate is used to represent the price expectations of hundreds or thousands of producers, which could masks a wide range behavior among heterogenous producers. Rather than assuming the model’s representation of producer expectations is correct, the goal of this paper is to use revealed producer behavior to assist in the estimation of producer’s expected prices. To explicitly address producers’ formation of the expected price, this study jointly estimates the supply equation and the price e...

Yield variability can be significantly higher at the farm level than at more aggregated levels, i... more Yield variability can be significantly higher at the farm level than at more aggregated levels, including the county. However, due to a dearth of available farm level data, much stochastic analysis involving farm yields utilizes more aggregated yield data as a proxy for the farm level. We empirically evaluate farm-level variability using longitudinal farm level data sets available from the Kansas Farm Management Association and the Illinois Farm Business and Farm Management Association. For corn, soybeans, and wheat, we compare the farm level yield variability obtained from this data to that inferred from Federal crop insurance premiums. The farm management data exhibit lower yield variability than are implied by the crop insurance premiums.

This paper develops an approach to empirically demonstrate how the within-season distribution of ... more This paper develops an approach to empirically demonstrate how the within-season distribution of U.S. domestic commodity support for corn differs between current-style approaches of support and revenue-based support. From a purely economic standpoint, the results show the revenue-based payment scenarios to be preferable at the national level to the uncoordinated forms of support currently in use, even in a situation where the annual mean payments are set equal across the support scenarios. For revenue-based support, the variability around the total expected annual payment is lower, and perhaps more importantly, the probability of high payments is lower. These results suggest advantages to this type of support, both in terms of lower budgetary uncertainty for producers and the Federal government and in meeting multilateral commitments for limiting spending on domestic commodity support.

Microeconomics: Decision-Making under Risk & Uncertainty eJournal, 2019

Panel regressions are used to relate standardized county weather variables to yield outcomes in o... more Panel regressions are used to relate standardized county weather variables to yield outcomes in order to develop a crop disaster program for the top producing states of corn, soybeans, wheat, and cotton. Farm‐level simulations are used to draw yield realizations and provide realistic consistency between county, district, and state yields and national prices. The proposed crop disaster program is estimated to save between 3and3 and 3and4 billion per year relative to the current crop insurance program, a reduction of approximately 30% compared to the $10.06 billion in federal expenditures on the crop insurance program in 2016. The savings are realized though two main mechanisms: (1) Focusing agricultural support on systemic weather risk and excluding idiosyncratic risk; and (2) Reducing the administrative cost of the program by eliminating underwriting gains accruing to private companies currently participating in the delivery of crop insurance. The disadvantage of the crop disaster product...

Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, 1997

Using farmer responses to contingent valuation method (CVM) survey data in combination with actua... more Using farmer responses to contingent valuation method (CVM) survey data in combination with actual market data from four watershed regions in the United States, this study estimates the minimum incentives payments a farmer would accept in order to adopt more environmentally friendly “"best management practices"” (BMPs). Combining actual market data with the CVM data adds information to the analysis, thereby most likely increasing the reliability of the results compared to analyzing the contingent behavior survey response data only. Given the decision to adopt, the article also presents a pooled model for the number of acres enrolled in the BMPs as a function of the incentive payments. Adoption rates predicted with the combination data model are significantly higher over a wide range of offers than those predicted using the traditional discrete choice analysis with the hypothetical data only. Hence, using the traditional CVM analysis results to determine payments to attai...