We quantify the emergence of biofuel markets and its impact on U.S. and world agriculturefor the coming decade using the multi-market, multi-commodity international FAPRI (Food andAgricultural Policy Research Institute) model. The model incorporates the trade-offs betweenbiofuel, feed, and food...

The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) of the European Union has been in a process of reform since the early 1990s. As a result of reforms, agricultural market regulations have become more liberal and direct payments have been introduced which are to a large extent decoupled from production. In...

This survey paper explores the literature on decoupling of farm programs that has emerged inthe last 10 years. The paper identifies and assesses the various channels of potential coupling ofdecoupled farm payments and provides a taxonomy of coupling mechanisms found in theoreticaland empirical...

This paper analyses the empirical determinants of contract length, a key andyet neglected dimension of contractual structure. I estimate contract length andcontract type jointly using original data on tenancy agreements signed between1870 and 1880 in the district of Siracusa, Italy.The findings...

The choice of cultivation techniques is a key determinant of agricultural productivityand has important consequences for income growth and poverty reductionin developing countries. Using household data from Nicaragua this papershows that the choice of cultivation techniques depends on farmers’...

This chapter develops a unified analytical framework, drawing on and extending the existing literatureon the subject, for studying the role of property rights in economic development. Itaddresses two fundamental and related questions concerning the relationship between propertyrights and...

We show that the effect of eviction threats on unobservable investment effort can be positive. Wedemonstrate this apparently counter-intuitive result in a model of tenancy where investment by atenant in the current period raises the chances of doing well in the next period, and...

The well-known inverse relationship between farm size and productivity is usually explained in terms ofdiminishing returns with respect to land and other inputs coupled with various types of market frictions thatprevent the efficient allocation of land across farms. We show that even in the...

We analyze optimal contract choice in agriculture when there is joint moral hazard onthe part of the farmer in the supply of effort and the riskiness of the technique ofcultivation. In the presence of limited liability, high-powered incentive contracts such asfixed rental contracts will induce...

The paper provides a methodology which is suitable for the analysis of the socialcost of disease and the benefits and cost of health intervention by integrating public healthanalysis and economics. The approach developed in the paper is applied to food-bornediarrhea in Rwanda. The results...