The rise of contract farming and vertical integration is one of the most important changes in modern agriculture. Yet the adoption and diffusion of these new forms of organization has varied widely across regions, commodities, or farm types, however. Transaction cost theories and the like are...

With increasing interest in renewable energy from agriculture, including biopower and cellulose ethanol, several aspects of the industry must be understood. Study of the organization of the biopower industry represents an under researched area and a new application of transaction cost theory to...

The production of biofuels in many countries is largely driven by the governmentstrategy and incentives that are in place. In South Africa the first round of thedevelopment of such a draft strategy took place in 2005 while the official stance onbiofuels was finalized in December of 2007. During...

Why do biotech firms cluster? New and established firms in biotech clusters are said to capitalize on knowledge spillovers, labor-market pooling, and other externalities. Some have even argued that such spillovers are so strong that the cluster itself, rather than the individual, is the “locus...