Anecdotal reports suggest that the USDA Farm Service Agency's Direct Loan Program (DLP) discriminated against minority farmers. We collect data from the Economic Research Service's Phase III Agricultural and Resource Management Survey (ARMS) between 1992 and 2007, and find evidence consistent with these claims. We document a difference in the percentage of direct loans going to minority farmers and the percentage of minority farmers in the ARMS sample. However, one cannot attribute this difference to discrimination without accounting for the loan application process—minority farmers may be less likely to apply for a loan. To address this, we develop a cohesive empirical approach using the NASS Agricultural Census, ARMS and FSA Administrative data to analyze discriminatory practices and other facets of the DLP such as its impact on graduation to the commercial loan sector. Results were communicated to USDA representatives and presented to academic audiences, including the Giannini Foundation Student Conference.

This research project assesses the political implications of intra-aquifer heterogeneity in the benefits and costs of optimal groundwater management. We use simulation modeling to predict groundwater extraction regimes under two alternative local decision-making structures and compare these structures to optimal management. Local collective action performs poorly when the intra-aquiferdisparity in the potential gains is large. As a result, local collective action is unlikely to be successful in capturing the largest welfare gains. Individual subregions within a groundwater basin almost always benefit most from political structures whose outcomes diverge from optimal management. The analysis in this paper suggests that there may be regions where large potential gains from optimal management are available, but cannot be realized by the two alternative local political institutions. Thus, there may be a role for State intervention in the local political processes by which local water management decisions are made.

Publications

"Property Rights and Water Transfers: Bargaining Among Multiple Stakeholders" (with Susan Stratton Sayre and Leo K. Simon). Strategic Behavior and the Environment 1(1): 1-29, 2010.

"Local Negotiation with Heterogeneous Groundwater Users" (with Susan Stratton Sayre and Leo K. Simon). Forthcoming in Strategic Behavior and the Environment.