The ageing of farmers and lack of successors are major concerns for the future of the sector. The paper analyses the age structure of family workers with a twofold objective. The ageing dynamics is analyzed in order to seek out its inertial components as well as any new trends there may be. The...

This paper investigates the impact of technological change on local labour market outcomes in Britain. Using a newly assembled panel database for the period 2000-2007 and a directly observed measure of technological change based on patent records, the analysis suggests that employment levels are...

This study first summarises the forces that affect positively and negatively the spatial concentration of economic activity, and the bell curve that links general transaction costs to regional disparities. The specific role played by local labour markets is then detailed. While spatial...

The discussion about the effectiveness of active policy measures that consider spatial socioeconomic aspects has become especially important in light of recent socio-economic developments. The paper presents an alternative methodology for the determination of spatial boundaries for any...

The purpose of this article is to re-estimate China s agricultural surplus labor. Our estimation is based on three prevalent methods including classical, neoclassical and standard structure comparing methods. Different from other researchers, we pay attention to not only the total amount of...

The existence of an inverse relationship (IR) between farm size and productivity in tropical agriculture remains a debated issue with policy relevance. Poor agricultural statistical data, including data on farm sizes and farm plot sizes that typically are self-reported by farmers, can lead to...

Although non-farm enterprises are ubiquitous in rural Sub-Saharan Africa, little is yet known about their productivity. In this paper we contribute to filling this gap by providing estimates of labor productivity in enterprises for Ethiopia, Malawi, Nigeria, and Uganda. Using the World Bank's...

Africa is not only the poorest and most rural continent, it is also the most youthful continent in terms of population. Given the large number of young job seekers that will enter the labor market over the next decade, we need a better understanding of rural non-farm entrepreneurship,...

The question of farm size has long been a concern in the agricultural economics literature. The observation of a long-lasting persistence of so-called small farms drew the attention of numerous researchers. The size of farms is often approximated by the farm area in hectares or the added value...

The focus of this paper is on the rural poor of south Asia and their struggle to cope with the seasonal risk of unemployment and the ensuing income risks. In the absence of formal credit or insurance markets the rural poor typically resort to, among other options, the following informal...