This paper attempts to assess the relative contributions of the farm and non-farm sectors to the increase in agricultural wage earnings in India between 1983-1999. Cross-section analysis of NSS data for 1983 and 1993 confirm the importance of farm productivity growth, consistent with the...

We argue that women may be disinclined to participate in market work in the rural areas of India because of family status concerns in a culture that stigmatizes market work by married women. We set out a theoretical framework that offers predictions regarding the effects of caste-based status...

This paper measures the percolation of food subsidy expenditures to th e poor. The paper proposes a metric that takes into account the depth and width of income transfer. The metric is applied to food subsidy expenditures in India and Philippines. Both countries operate in-kind transfer schemes....

This paper is an empirical analysis of the gains from contract farming in the case of poultry production in the state of Andhra Pradesh in India. The paper finds that contract production is more efficient than noncontract production. The efficiency surplus is largely appropriated by the...

The limited presence of futures exchanges in developing countries where commodity markets fall short of the ideal underscore the importance of understanding the relation between spot and futures markets. The paper examines the exceptional success of the soya oil contract at the National Board of...

Liberalization, stronger intellectual property rights laws and the commercialization of biotechnology have led the private sector to become an important supplier of varietal technology in agriculture in developed and developing countries. The departure from the public sector driven Green...

Genetically modified seeds have to be approved by biosafety regulators before they can be commercialized. Illegal seeds are, however, common in many developing countries including Brazil, China and India. They potentially pose dangers to biosafety and also undermine the intellectual property...

Earlier analyses of area yield crop insurance schemes used a linear additive model (LAM) to express the relationship between individual and area yield. Although similar to the capital asset pricing model used in finance, the theoretical foundations of the LAM are unknown. A contribution of this...

This monograph was written to be part of the series of studies commissioned by the Ministry of Agriculture under the rubric of "State of Indian Farmer - A Millennium Study". On the basis of existing literature, this study documents the status of our knowledge on risks of agriculture and their...