Principal Investigator: 

Randal Rucker, Ph.D, Professor, Agricultural Economics & Economics

 

Rucker

One common form of market regulation in the United States involves restricting output levels. In programs that restrict output, expected future program-created profits (or rents) are often capitalized into the value of business assets. This program focuses on this capitalization process and how different factors affect the capitalized value of “artificial” inputs created by government regulations, with particular focus on two government programs that create artificial inputs whose values as tradable assets are substantial – taxicab regulatory systems in major U.S. cities and the Montana liquor license system. In both of these programs, asset values such as the transfer prices of all-liquor licenses in Montana and of taxicab medallions in New York City have reached levels of $1 million or more in recent years. One primary objective of the analysis of medallion values will be to estimate the impacts on those values of important recent technological innovation in transportation markets – the advent of Uber.

Randal R. Rucker is a professor in the Department of Agricultural Economics and Economics at Montana State University. He has published research on various issues related to agricultural policy, contracting, and the regulation and management of natural resources in the Journal of Political Economy, American Economic Review, Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Law and Economics, Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Energy Economics, Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Journal of Forestry and Journal of Applied Forestry. Over the course of his career, Prof. Rucker has received six awards for outstanding research from the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, the Western Agricultural Economics Association, and the European Association of Agricultural Economists. Prof.. Rucker received his B.S and M.S. in economics from Montana State University and his Ph. D. in economics from the University of Washington in 1984. Before returning to MSU in 1991, Prof. Rucker spent seven years as a member of the Agricultural Economics and Economics faculty at North Carolina State University.