Private farming is the dominant mode of agricultural production in most European countries. Not all farmers are equally successful, economically. In this paper it is analysed whether social capital is an important factor contributing to higher agricultural incomes. Based on the findings of a...

Social capital matters in determining a person’s or a family’s material well-being. It is argued that social capital functions similar to the traditional production factors. However, there are not many empirical analyses looking into this hypothesis at the farm-household level in...

Although interest in the structure and relational features of social capital and its underlying networks has grown since the early 1990s, the terms do not embody any ideas that are really new to sociologists, but are indeed rather new to economists. Until the 1950s, land, labour, and financial...

In the Czech Republic, agricultural production is still dominated by corporate farms. Private farms have been established since the change of the political regime, but their role is not that relevant as originally anticipated. Among both groups, some have been economically more successful than...

With the change of the political regime in Central and Eastern Europe, both managers of corporate farms and newly established private farmers had to adjust to the rules of the market economy. Among both groups, some are economically more successful than others. In general, a varying adoption of...

Over fifteen years have elapsed since the transition from the centrally planned economic system started in the early 1990âs. During this time agricultural and rural areas of Central and Eastern Europe have undergone profound structural changes with wide variations in the degree of...

In the course of transition, the role of household plots in agricultural production in Ukraine has grown substantially in importance. The key reason for this is the integration of household plots into large agricultural enterprises. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the economic efficiency...

Using a sample of French crop farms during the 1999-2006 period, we test whether less technically efficient farmers are more likely to engage in organic farming in order to benefit from conversion subsidies. Despite some limitations in our data, we find no evidence of such selection effect. On...

Agriculture’s impact on climate change is unambiguous although its role is multifaceted as it is a source of greenhouse gases but also a sink. It’s feasibility to mitigate climate change has raised interest, but thorough studies about the net benefits of the mitigation practices are needed....

In order to measure agriculture sustainability, the efficient use of inputs becomes a crucial issue. In this perspective, the analysts concentrate their attention on the total factor productivity index (TFP). In this view, Lynam and Herdt (1989) proposed the TFP as a suitable assessment of the...