The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effects of changes in the external trade environment and domestic economic policies on the agricultural development of Malaysia. The scope of this research also includes providing further insights into the strengths and weaknesses of the computable...

China's economy has undergone fundamental changes since 1978. Agriculture, industry and services are being transformed into market economies. Marketing and domestic trade have also been reformed to take into account regional comparative advantages. The government, however, still controls input...

The policy preference function (PPF) approach has become popular with economists seeking to explain the origin of government policies. In this paper, a distinction between positive and normative work with the PPF concept is made. Positive work is shown to suffer from a variety of shortcomings...

Both informal and formal loans matter in agriculture. However, formal lenders provide many more production loans than informal lenders, often at a cost (mostly loan default cost) higher than what they can recover. For example, the Agricultural Development Bank of Pakistan (ADBP), providing about...

The growth of market capitalism and the technological advances of the last two centuries underlie the relentless process of structural change in agriculture. Substantial occupational migration out of farming and geographical migration from rural to urban areas is a characteristic of most, if not...

Groundwater has the characteristics of commonly owned property, and its use is likely to be inefficient in the absence of regulation. Several management tools can be used to regulate groundwater withdrawals, with no one tool dominating the others in terms of efficiency of water use. However, the...

The substitution of capital goods, including new technology, for land and labour has played an important role and has influenced the structure of Sout African agriculture. Farm labour-related trends in the summer rainfall grain-producing area of South Africa are considered. The amount of labour...

This paper examines the relative economic efficiency of small and large rice farms in Cote d'Ivoire using a profit function approach. No differences in the relative economic efficiency of small and large farms were found. This conclusion is robust under alternative model specifications. Agrarian...

Economists investigating consumer demand have accumulated considerable evidence showing that consumers generally have subjective preferences for characteristics of products and that their demand for products is significantly affected by their perceptions of the product's attributes. However, the...

Rapid institutional innovation in the 1980's has led to problems that exceed the scope of research normally assumed by individual researchers. During such periods of rapid change, subject-matter research may be particularly useful. This paper reviews research on the Federal Agricultural Mortgage...