April 23, 2013
Hendricks, Peterson earn a publication honor from Western Agricultural Economics Association
Two faculty in the department of agricultural economics have earned a publication honor from the Western Agricultural Economics Association Inc., or WAEA.
Nathan Hendricks, assistant professor, and Jeff Peterson, professor, submitted the paper "Fixed Effects Estimation of the Intensive and Extensive Margins of Irrigation Water Demand," which was published in the April 2012 issue of the Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, or JARE. The article was selected to receive this year's Western Agricultural Economics Association Outstanding Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics Award.
Hendricks and Peterson will be honored for their award at the awards luncheon June 28 at the association's annual meeting in Monterey, Calif. Hendricks has been with the agricultural economics department at K-State since 2011. Peterson has been with the department since 2000.
The following is the abstract for the article:
Irrigation water demand is estimated using field-level panel data from Kansas over 16 years. The cost of pumping varies over time due to changes in energy prices and across space due to differences in the depth to water. Exploiting this variation allows us to estimate the demand elasticity while controlling for field-farmer and year fixed effects. Fixed effects also allow us to control for land use without an instrument or assumptions about the distribution of errors. Our estimates of water demand are used to calculate the cost of reducing irrigation water use through water pricing, irrigation cessation, and intensity-reduction program.