摘要：We examine contracts used by growers and processorsin the US sugarbeet industry. Though quite similar in most re-spects, the markets we study exhibit enough variation to representa sort of natural experiment. One set of growing regions di.ersfrom the rest in the farm-level pro duction technology available togrowers, and in the set of performance measures used to conditioncontracts. The second of these di.erences is somewhat surpris-ing given that the informational content and cost of employing thevarious performance are likely similar across all production regions.Using agency theory, we provide one plausible explanation for theobserved di.erence in contract structure that relies on nitrogen andirrigation being complementary in sugarbeet production.
