Following an 8-year long dispute over cotton subsidies, Brazil and the United States signed a Memorandum of Understanding on April 21, 2010, effectively paving the way for settling the dispute. This paper argues that cotton subsidies are just the tip of the iceberg while a number of other,...

There have been numerous episodes of widespread adoption of improved seed and long-term achievements in the development of the maize seed industry in Sub-Saharan Africa. This summary takes a circumspect view of technical change in maize production. Adoption of improved seed has continued to rise...

Although good and timely information on agricultural production is critical for policy-decisions, the quality of underlying data is often low and improving data quality could have a high payoff. This paper uses data from a production diary, administered concurrently with a standard household...

During the past decade, cotton prices remained considerably below other agricultural prices (although they recovered toward the end of 2010). Yet, between 2000-04 and 2005-09 world cotton production increased 13 percent. This paper conjectures that biotechnology-induced productivity improvements...

Agricultural markets in OECD countries have long been highly distorted by government policies. Traditional weighted average aggregates of the price distortions involved, such as producer and consumer support estimates can be poor indicators of the trade restrictiveness and economic welfare...

Eliciting subjective probability distributions in developing countries is often based on visual aids such as beans to represent probabilities and intervals on a sheet of paper to represent the support. The authors conducted an experiment in India that tested the sensitivity of elicited...

This paper examines the effect of the financial crisis on off-farm employment of China's rural labor force. Using a national representative data set collected from across China, the paper finds that there was a substantial impact. By April 2009 the reduction in off-farm employment as a result of...

Asia's green revolution in rice was transformational and improved the lives of millions of poor households. Rice has become an increasingly important part of African diets and imports of rice have grown. Agronomists point out that large areas in Africa are well suited for rice and are encouraged...

Using the Agricultural Census 2003 and the Rice Household Survey 2008 for Indonesia, this paper analyzes the distribution of benefits from fertilizer subsidies and their impact on rice production. The findings suggest that most farmers benefit from fertilizer subsidies; however, the 40 percent...

During the late 1980s and the 1990s, most countries in Sub-Saharan Africa implemented agricultural policy reforms, along with national political and economic reforms. The agricultural reforms focused on opening up processing and marketing activities to increased competition and eliminating...