This empirical study investigates the effects of different agri-environmental schemes on individual producer behaviour. We consider the effects on production intensity, performance and structure for a sample of UK cereal farms for the period 2000 to 2009 and use the policy examples of the...

This paper examines the impact of transgenic technology adoption on varietal diversity. Transgenic pest-resistant varieties are hypothesized to reduce farmers’ demand for on-farm diversity through an act of substitution, as both serve as production risk reducing instruments. This adverse...

In this paper, we analyze the relationships between the prices of biodiesel, ethanol and related fuels and agricultural commodities with a use of minimal spanning trees and hierarchical trees. To distinguish between short-term and medium-term effects, we construct these trees for different...

Over the last 150 years, agriculture has been subject to several waves of innovation which have significantly altered its institutional structures, its products and the way it is practised. Mechanical, biological and chemical innovations have, in turn, reduced labour requirements, increased...

Previous studies have found underestimation of risk, or overconfidence, to be a key factor in entrepreneurship. We use a simple model of competitive equilibrium to show that an irrational under-estimation of risk provides a competitive advantage leading to a greater chance of survival under...

Using data gathered in two surveys we analyze the movement of information in agriculture. The relative importance of varying classes of information providers are assessed by classes of users. A network based framework expands models of human capital and bounded rationality to assess the calculus...