This paper proposes use of separable programming for selecting farm enterprises which are efficient in terms of expected income and income variance. An empirical application on a croplivestock farm in the Columbia Basin of Washington is presented. The effects of removing statistically insignificant covariance terms and the error introduced by the linear approximation are explored.

THIS PAPER DESCRIBES A METHOD FOR INCORPORATING EXOGENOUS PRICE CHANGES INTO INPUT-OUTPUT ANALYSIS AND THEREBY ESTIMATING THEIR IMPACT ON A REGIONAL ECONOMY. THE EMPIRICAL RESULTS DEMONSTRATE THAT WHEN THE PRICES OF WHEAT, ELECTRICITY, PETROLEUM, AND NATURAL GAS ARE INCREASED BY EXOGENOUS FORCES, THEIR EFFECTS ON WASHINGTON STATE'S ECONOMY ARE SIGNIFICANT AND DIVERSE. THE METHOD CAN BE MODIFIED TO ENABLE ITS USE FOR FORECASTING ENDOGENOUS PRICE CHANGES, UNDER CERTAIN ASSUMPTIONS.

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A method is developed to find sequences of expected utility maximizing decisions under risk aversion when random elements are time-dependent and additive separable utility of income is implausible. A Taylor-series approximation to expected utility is used. In an application to marketing stored wheat, expected seasonal sales patterns, early fractional sales of total inventory for risk reduction, and negative skewness in resulting income distributions are noted. Sensitivity to the number of income distribution moments used to approximate expected utility is examined. Six moments produce a good approximation. Use of only mean and variance can give doubtful results. Copyright 1997, Oxford University Press.