Guang Tian

[Job Market Paper]

Spring Precipitation, Delayed Planting, and Farmer Adaptation in Midwestern Soybean Production

Abstract

Excessive precipitation in the spring season can lead to costly planting delays. This study quantifies yield losses from delayed soybean planting in the U.S. Midwest due to excessive spring precipitation and examines the extent to which farmers mitigate these losses through adaptive management. Using novel county-level planting progress data spanning 2000–2020, we construct a comprehensive panel dataset combining weather and yield data across 979 counties. To address endogeneity concerns, we employ an instrumental variable approach using precipitation shocks during the planting season. Our results indicate that each additional day that Midwestern soybean planting is delayed reduces soybean yields on average by 0.71 bushels per acre (about 1.6% of total yield), while farmers’ adaptive responses mitigate approximately 36% of this loss. These findings underscore the importance of accounting for farmers’ adaptive behaviors when assessing weather-related yield risks and contribute to broader discussions on climate change adaptation in agriculture.

Publications

[1] Tian, G., Lu, L., and McIntosh, C. (2021). ``What Factors Affect Consumers’ Dining Sentiments and Their Ratings: Evidence from Restaurant Online Review Data.'' Food Quality and Preference, 88:104060.

[2] Tian, G., Du, X., Qiao, F., and Trujillo-Barrera, A. (2021). ``Technology Adoption and Learning-by-Doing: The Case of Bt Cotton Adoption in China.'' Journal of Risk and Financial Management, 14(11), 524.

[3] Lu, L., Tian, G., and Hatzenbuehler, P. (2022). ``How Agricultural Economists Are Using Big Data: A Review.'' China Agricultural Economic Review, 14(3), 494-508.

[4] Hatzenbuehler, P., Chahine, M., Du, X., and Tian, G. (2023). ``Quantification of Feed Crop Supply and Demand in Idaho, 2003–2021.'' Western Economics Forum, Vol. 21, No. 1, pp. 30-42.

Work in Progress

[1] Vertical Structure, Price Spread, and Demand in the Organic Milk Market: A Structural Analysis

Abstract

While the organic milk business has achieved great success, the organic dairy farm’s situation may not be as promising as the fast-growing organic industry. The number of small farms with 10-199 milk cows fell by 37% between 2007 and 2017. This is because organic milk production is a high initial investment, high production cost, and small-scale business which makes organic producers in an adverse position when setting prices with downstream firms. In this paper, we examine how much market power organic dairy farms and other participants have in the milk supply chain. We use the Nielsen scanner data and structural model to estimate the margin of organic milk producers and retailers in Wisconsin and Illinois between 2017 and 2019. Based on the successive oligopoly assumption on the supply side, we calculate producer and retailer’s margins of the most popular 5 conventional and 4 organic milk products in the area. The most striking finding of our paper is even if organic milk’s margin is about twice of conventional milk, organic farms only extract 4.6% of organic milk’s margin. We also find that the marginal cost of organic milk production is about two times higher than conventional milk. On the demand side, we find that consumer demographics, like household education and whether has kids, play an important role in consumers’ choice of organic milk.

[2] Expert Opinion vs Consumer Opinion: Evidence from Wine Shopping

Abstract

Consumer peer opinions and expert opinions are the two important opinions that consumers seek from while shopping but we know little about their contents and whether they are consistent or not. Answers to these questions are critical to understand the mechanism of how different information sources affect consumer purchase decisions. In this paper, we compared contents of consumer and expert opinions and examine under what conditions they are more consistent than others. We exploit 397,244 online consumer reviews and expert review data over 929 wines between 2012 and 2022 to analyze the two opinions. We found that consumer and expert reviews are more consistent under high price wine products. In their text reviews for high price wines, consumers express more sentiments and descriptions of wines are closer to experts.

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