Many countries subsidize agricultural inputs but require farmers to travel to retailers to access inputs, just as for normal purchases. What effect do travel costs have on subsidy take-up and input usage, particularly for remote farmers? We analyze Malawi's Farm Input Subsidy Program (FISP), and...

This paper provides a general overview of the social, environmental, and economical issues related to biofuels and a review of economic modeling of biofuels. The increasing importance of biofuels is driven primarily by government policies since currently available biofuels are generally not...

Land use and land use change are determined as much by economic and institutional drivers as they depend on bio-physical conditions. Future pathways of socio-economic and environmental systems can only be assessed with scenarios which describe possible future paths of development. For this...

In low potential agricultural areas like the Honduran hillsides characterized by soil degradation and erosion, organic agriculture can provide a means to break the downward spiral of resource degradation and poverty. We use original survey data to analyze the factors influencing the decision to...

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...

Low adoption of productive agricultural technologies is a puzzle. Agricultural extension services rely on external agents to communicate with farmers, although social networks are known to be the most credible source of information about new technologies. We conduct a large-scale field...

We measure the impact of the removal of a railway transportation subsidy on the adoption of technology for Western Canadian farms, using a unique combination of Census and freight rate data. We exploit the large regional variation in these one-time freight rate increases in order to identify...

This paper assesses the role of risk constraints in households' production decisions. Using representative panel data for Andhra Pradesh, India, it analyses the effects of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) on households' crop choices. This paper shows that the introduction...

The paper analyses the impact of agricultural technologies on the four pillars of food security for maize farmers in Tanzania. Relying on matching techniques, we use a nationally representative dataset collected over the period 2010/2011 to estimate the causal effects of using improved seeds and...

The Renewable Energy Source Act (EEG) promotes German biogas production in order to substitute fossil fuels, protect the environment, and prevent climate change. As a consequence, green maize production has increased significantly over the last years, causing negative environmental effects on...