Over the last five decades, the growing demand for ecosystem services, such as food, water and fuel has led to the most rapid and extensive changes in ecosystems in human history. Examples for these transformations include the agricultural intensification at the habitat and landscapes scale. In...

Gender equity in the creation and enforcement of social norms is important not only as a normative principle but it can also support long term economic growth. Yet in most societies, coercive power is in the hands of men. We investigate whether this form of segregation is due to inherent gender...

Linking small farmers to global markets through contract farming has become an important policy recommendation aiming to increase farmers’ income and foster rural development. Nevertheless, some of the arrangements involving small farmers have been reported to loose participants or collapse...

I: Palm oil production creates negative externalities, e.g., through intensive fertiliser application. Policies to limit externalities need an effective, sustainable and efficient measure We use a business simulation game in a framed field experiment in Indonesia to test ex ante different...

Contract flexibility can be expedient for economic exchange in environments with high ambiguity and risk, but may also encourage opportunistic behavior. We run a modified investment game, including the choice between two different contract designs and asymmetric information about the realized...

Contracts may be subject to strategic default, particularly if public enforcement institutions are weak. In a lab experiment, we study behavior in a contract farming game without third-party enforcement but with an external spot market as outside option. Two players, farmer and company, may...

Gender equity in the creation and enforcement of social norms is important not only as a normative principle but it can also support long term economic growth. Yet in most societies, coercive power is in the hands of men. We investigate whether this form of segregation is due to gender...

Although there is a lot of evidence for the positive welfare effects of contract farming, it is not clear how to integrate farmers into contracts and how to maintain stable long-term-relationships between farmers and agri-business firms. While Contract Farming is a formal institutional...