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Integrated Assessment Models For Agricultural Systems:

Integrated Assessment Models for Agricultural Systems:
Micro-Foundations, Aggregation and Market Equilibrium
PhD Research Proposal
Roberto Valdivia
Department of Agricultural Economics and Economics, Montana State University, USA
February 2006
PhD Research Proposal to Wageningen University, The Netherlands.
Copyright 2006 by Roberto Valdivia. All rights reserved. Readers may make
verbatim copies of this document for non-commercial purposes by any means,
provided that this copyright notice appears on all such copies.
http://www.tradeoffs.montana.edu/pdf/PhD-Proposal-2-06-06.pdf
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Integrated Assessment Models for Agricultural Systems:
Micro-Foundations, Aggregation and Market Equilibrium
PhD. Research Proposal
By Roberto Valdivia
February, 2006
SUMMARY
One of the aims of agricultural research is to develop sustainable agricultural
production systems that balance the often competing goals of profitability, human and
environmental health, and equity. Typically, the integrated assessment required for this
analysis takes place at the farm level where farming systems are analyzed, and changes to
the cropping system are designed for a better performance of the system given numerous
boundary conditions including the agro-ecological conditions, markets and agricultural
policies. Although the analysis is only valid at the farm level, the results are often used at
higher scale levels assuming a certain level of representativeness of the farming system.
At higher scale levels different processes become important and we have to deal with the
intrinsic variability of the population of farming systems. In addition, interactions
between farms become important. Boundary conditions assumed to be constant at the
farm level (e.g. prices) are now driven by the population of farmers.
The tradeoff analysis model links site-specific bio-physical process models and
economic decision models, and thus deals explicitly with the intrinsic variability of farms
and...