Quality Measurement and Contract Design: Evidence from the North American Sugar Beet Industry

Tigran A. Melkonian
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Brent Hueth (brent.hueth@usda.gov) and Tigran Melkonyan (tamelkonyan@ua.edu)

Staff General Research Papers Archive from Iowa State University, Department of Economics

Abstract: This paper examines contracts used in the North American sugarbeet industry. Though quite similar in many respects, the contracts we study vary across processing firms in the set of quality measures used to condition contract payments to growers. This is somewhat surprising, given the homogeneous nature of the processors' finished product (refined sugar). It seems unlikely that processors differ significantly in how they value the various attributes of a sugarbeet, and such a difference is perhaps the most natural reason to expect variation in the structure of quality incentives across processors. Previous attempts to explain the observed variation in sugarbeet contracts have focused on differences in organizational form across firms. In this paper, we provide an alternative explanation that relies on variation across production regions in growers' ability to control the relevant measures of sugarbeet quality.

Date: 2004-01-01
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Published in Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics 2004, vol. 52, pp. 165-181

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:isu:genres:12350

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