The emphasis of education as a driving force for the growth of agricultural productivity can be dated back to the early 1960s. However, most empirical work failed to take into account of the fact that production technology changes with timeand consequently obscure the true contribution of...

The development of agricultural biotechnology offers the opportunity to increase crop production, lowers farming costs, improves food quality and could reduce costs to consumers. For the food importing economies, the import quantities as well as prices will be affected through world market as...

The outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) in 1997 has resulted in significant losses to Taiwan's hog industry which was the most important industry in Taiwan's agricultural sector at that time. Hog farmers have suffered great losses due to the cost of slaughtering infected hogs and reduced...

Taiwan had approximately 3,000 buildings damaged by floods with an economic loss of NT$12.8 billion annually, a figure 4.5 times more than economic losses due to fire damages. Many insurers become extremely cautious when underwriting their flood policies for people living in areas that are...

In this study we use Taiwan as a case study to provide an economy-wide analysis of impacts on Taiwan of WTO tariff reduction schemes with different combinations of thresholds and reduction rates. The model we utilized in this study is Taiwan General Equilibrium Model with a WTO module...

This study analyzes the potential consequences of an outbreak of avian influenza (H5N1) on Taiwan¡¦s macro economy and individual industries. Both the Input-Output (IO) Analysis Model and Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) Model are used to simulate the possible damage brought by lowering...

This paper addresses the question how team production promotes efficiency of a firm when some inputs can be rewarded on the basis of outputs but some cannot because they are shared among outputs and non-separable. A multi-activity DEA model with variable returns to scale is proposed to provide...

Agriculture operates in an uncertain environment. Yields, prices, and resource usage can change dramatically from year to year. However, most analyses of the agricultural sector, at least those using mathematical programming methods, assume decision making is based on average yields, ignoring...