Since the early 1990s, liberalization of the seed market in Tanzania has attracted several foreign companies that now market maize hybrids in the country. In this article, we analyze the impacts of proprietary hybrids on maize yields, production, and household living standards. We build on a...

Modern technologies are often not widely adopted among smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa. Several adoption constraints have been discussed in the literature, including limited access to information. Using survey data from farmers in Tanzania and the average treatment effect framework, we...

Productivity and efficiency are key performance indicators of improved seeds. Efficiency differences explain part of the variation in productivity. Improved seeds may affect efficiency because farmers often do not apply inputs at optimum. Improved seeds therefore not only directly affect...

We examine co-movements between biofuels (ethanol and biodiesel) and a wide range of commodities and assets in the USA, Europe, and Brazil. The main contributions are twofold. First, we analyze a unique dataset of 32 commodities and relevant assets (between 2003 and 2015) which is unprecedented...

The article investigates the connections between the prices of biofuels and many traded commodities and other relevant assets in Europe, USA and Brazil. The analysis uses a comprehensive dataset covering price data for 32 relevant traded titles over the period 2003-2015. Main contribution of...

This paper replicates and extends the study of Zhang et al. (2010): 'Food versus fuel: What do prices tell us?" Energy Policy 38, pp. 445-451. We confirm the findings of the original paper that there was only a weak relationship between ethanol and food commodities in the period between March...

In the wake of resource constraints faced by farmers in developing countries in using external farm inputs, sustainable agricultural production practices that rely on local or farm renewable resources present desirable options for enhancing agricultural productivity. In this paper we use...

In this paper we use farmers' actual experiences with changes in rainfall levels and their responses to these changes to assess if patterns of fertilizer use are responsive to changes in rainfall patterns. Using plot and farm level panel data from the central Highlands of Ethiopia matched with...

Organic farming practices, in as far as they rely on local or farm renewable resources, present desirable options for enhancing agricultural productivity for resource-constrained farmers in developing countries. In this paper we use plot-level data from semi-arid area of Ethiopia to investigate...

This paper evaluates the ex-post impact of adopting improved groundnut varieties on crop income and rural poverty in rural Uganda. The study utilizes cross-sectional farm household data collected in 2006 in seven districts of Uganda. We estimated the average adoption premium using propensity...