The Indonesian government has used oil palm as a major tool of rural socio-economic improvement, doing this through 'nucleus estates' operated by estate companies and through assisting individual smallholdings. The initiatives have together raised the incomes of more than 500,000 farmers, and...

The expression subsistence affluence is a catchphrase for certain perceptions of reality in Papua New Guinea, and after 50 years it still actively conditions opinions of the country (even though its population has trebled in the meantime). The paper examines antecedents of the concept in the...

The Farmer Field School (FFS) is an intensive training program providing farmers with science based knowledge and practices, including integrated pest management (IPM). Recently there has been intensive debate as to whether or not this kind of training has any significant impact. Most case...

This paper studies the eect of a sharp rice price increase on welfare and poverty in Bangladesh. We employ household expenditure information to estimate the welfare loss in- duced by the price increase. Our ndings suggest that we underestimate the proportionate welfare loss for the rice...

This study examines the effects of market reform on the agriculture sector of Tajikistan. It investigates the level and determinants of technical efficiency for a sample of cotton growing regions in Tajikistan. Using unbalanced panel data of 11 years covering the transition period 1992-2002, 34...

In vertical markets volatility at one level of the market may transmit itself to another level. This paper examines the linkages that exist between spreads at different levels of the market hierarchy in Indian rice markets. It highlights the behavior of spreads in the presence of information...

The present analysis seeks to build on household economics literature by focusing on who in fact has most say in cooking-the female spouse, the husband or a senior female member/ the mother-in-law-and how this role is shaped by a diversity of factors (e.g. caste, type of family, demographic...

China is considering a national emissions trading scheme, to follow several pilot schemes, as part of the suite of policies to reduce the growth of greenhouse gas emissions. A carbon tax or tax-like scheme could be an alternative. However there are special challenges in a fast-growing economy...

ndia's National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) has been hailed as one of the country's most creative social initiatives. Since the program was begun only recently (in 2004-05) there is a need to assess household access to this program and persistence of benefits to households not just...

This paper re-examines the sources of inequality in Vietnam, a transitional economy with large reductions in poverty from recent and dramatic economic growth, but vastly unequal gains across ethnic groups. Using an instrumental variable approach to provide consistent estimators of explanatory...