Impacts of agricultural and nonagricultural trade liberalization on agriculture are assessed in a multi-commodity, multi-country framework. By modeling simultaneously all goods sectors of the economy, we evaluate the importance of: (a) relative price changes between sectors, and (b) income and...

The decline in per-capita agricultural production has been reversed somewhat in tropical Africa by the structural adjustment programs which have increased producer prices, liberalized marketing and devalued currencies. But the 300Jo of smallholder farm households which are female-headed will not...

Few studies have been made of how fanners make decisions. Most research and teaching has focused on the decision event, not the whole process. Current knowledge of the decision making process is reviewed and described as a set of eight functions or elements: values and goals, problem detection,...

The external cost associated with the spread of pasture weeds such as serrated tussock (Nassella trichotoma) is an important economic problem. This problem is complicated in many parts of south-eastern Australia where low rainfall and low soil fertility prevent the economic viability of control...

Using data from the Malawi Financial Markets and Household Food Security Survey, this paper examines the effect of access to credit from formal sources, and tobacco plot size, on cost inefficiency among Malawian smallholder tobacco cultivators. Farm-specific cost inefficiency is estimated within...

This study relaxes the assumption of perfect and costless policy enforcement found in traditional agricultural policy analysis and introduces enforcement costs and cheating into the economic analysis of output subsidies. Policy design and implementation is modeled in this paper as a sequential...

Using the multi-product translog cost function, this paper examines the cost structure and technical change occurring within the novel Ghanaian rural banks. The results of the seemingly unrelated error components model indicate substantial unexploited economies of scale in individual products as...

This study investigates non-parametrically the optimizing behavior of a sample of 289 Kansas farms under profit-maximization and cost-minimization hypotheses. The study uses both deterministic and stochastic non-parametric tests. The deterministic results do not support strict adherence to...

In this study, we estimate production costs and elasticities of factor substitution for Zimbabwean smallholders, using a dual (cost function) approach with detailed data on prices paid and received by each of 65 farms across six survey sites over two years. We find that 95% of observed farm...

Advanced conceptual techniques for breakeven analysis of agricultural enterprise budgets are developed and applied. Breakeven points of a single agricultural enterprise, breakeven points between enterprises, and elasticities of breakeven points between enterprises are defined and mathematically...