ABSTRACT

Principles of Agricultural Economics, now in its second edition, showcases the power of economic principles to explain and predict issues and current events in the food, agricultural, agribusiness, international trade, natural resource and other sectors.

The field of agricultural economics has expanded to include a wide range of important and interesting topics, including macroeconomics, international trade, agribusiness, environmental economics, natural resources, and international development. For this new edition, the text has been updated throughout with a new chapter on policy, separate chapters for supply and demand, and increased coverage of key topics and approaches including finance, trade and behavioural economics. Readers will also benefit from an expanded range of case studies which demonstrate real world examples of the principles under discussion. These include obesity, alternative fuels, trade disputes, and animal welfare. The companion website provides students and instructors with extra material in order to enhance their learning and further their understanding of agricultural economics.

This book introduces economic principles in a succinct and reader-friendly format, providing students and instructors with a clear, up-to-date, and straightforward approach to learning how a market-based economy functions, and how to use simple economic principles for improved decision making. The principles are applied to timely, interesting, and important real-world issues through words, graphs, and simple algebra. This book is for students who study agricultural economics, microeconomics, rural development and environmental policy.

chapter 2|30 pages

The economics of production

chapter 3|28 pages

The costs of production

chapter 4|32 pages

Profit maximization

chapter 5|28 pages

Optimal input selection

chapter 6|16 pages

Optimal output selection

chapter 7|36 pages

Consumer choices

chapter 8|24 pages

Supply

chapter 9|34 pages

Demand

chapter 10|20 pages

Markets

chapter 11|30 pages

Government policies

chapter 12|20 pages

The competitive firm

chapter 13|26 pages

Market power

chapter 14|24 pages

Agriculture and the global economy

chapter 15|14 pages

Economics, agriculture, and the environment

chapter 16|15 pages

Agribusiness management