Theoretical models suggest that decisions about diet, weight and health status are endogenous within a utility maximisation framework. In this paper, we model these behavioural relationships in a fixed-effect panel setting using a simultaneous equation system, with a view to determining whether...

Replaced with revised version of paper 08/13/08.

Australian wool producers have been slow to adopt price risk management strategies to stabilise the income from their wool sales. The highly volatile auction system accounts for 85% of raw wool sales while the remainder is sold by forward contract, futures and other hedging methods. Qualitative...

The ability of African countries to achieve sustained improvements in agricultural incomes depends on their ability to generate total factor productivity (TFP) change in their agricultural sectors and adjust to movements in agricultural output and input prices. The single factoral terms of trade...

The European Union Water Framework Directive requires governments to set water quality objectives based on good ecological status. This includes specific requirements to control diffuse pollution. Diffuse phosphorous (P) pollution plays a pivotal role in influencing water quality with losses of...

Economists have rarely considered the implications of taxation systems for the agricultural sector. Management specialists and accountants have usually approached the issue from the perspective of how farmers and landowners can avoid it. Little has been written on the extent to which the special...

The provision of services in rural areas is constrained by a number of issues arising from the remoteness of such areas and the relative sparsity of rural populations. These factors combine to increase the cost of supply and reduce the demand for services, which consequently threatens the...

Conversion to particularly animal-friendly stabling (PAFS) is one of the programs for which Swiss farmers receive direct payments from the government. This conversion to PAFS is analysed within a structural equation model in order to 1) review the link between intention to convert and observed...

This paper reports the findings from a discrete choice experiment study designed to estimate the economic benefits associated with rural landscape improvements in Ireland. Using a mixed logit model, the panel nature of the dataset is exploited to retrieve willingness to pay values for every...

Starting with a brief overview of trends in plant variety protection (PVP) in the UK since inception of PVP legislation, this paper assesses the strength of incentives for innovation provided by the PVP regime. We modify and extend models from the patent literature that attempt to infer the...