Economies of scale and scope are often not exploited in Western agriculture. A general reason is probably that various types of transaction costs limit coordination among farmers. A more specific explanation is that coordination on land markets or machinery cooperation is difficult to achieve...

The bifurcation of Zambia's agricultural land markets prevents smallholder farmers from participating in modern food marketing channels. High transaction costs in terms of time and financial resources make conversion of customary land into commercial land title prohibitively expensive for...

This study analyzes public funding in the agricultural sector in Burkina Faso and assesses its impact on agricultural growth. Based on data collected from several sources (finance acts over the period 1983-2008, Automated Prediction Instrument (IPA), World Bank and National agricultural...

Paper prepared for presentation at the Third International Conference onCoexistence between Genetically Modified (GM) and non-GM basedAgricultural Supply Chains (GMCC)Seville (Spain), 20th and 21st November 2007

This study investigates the optimal agricultural land use allocation and nitrogen application to arepresentative Japanese farm. The site-specific nature of numerous agri-environmental issues necessitates analysis ata disaggregated level in order to capture the underlying heterogeneity of...

Nitrate pollution from agriculture is an important environmental problem, caused bythe excessive use of inorganic fertilizers. The internalization of this externality, via a tax onmineral nitrogen, could lead to a second best solution, reducing nitrate emissions. Severalauthors suggest that a...

According to Ricardian rent theory, the value of farm assets is equal to the discounted present value of future expected net rents from farm returns, and the discounted expected value of the land if converted to nonfarm development. Some recent research has considered modifying this standard...

Multi-Agent Simulation (MAS) models are intended to capture emergent properties of complex systems that are not amenable to equilibrium analysis. They are beginning to see some use for analysing agricultural systems. The paper reports on work in progress to create a MAS for specific sectors in...

The 2002 New Zealand Transport Strategy states that in the long run, economic development and transport activity need not be directly related. This implies that a degree of „decoupling‟ is required – that economic development needs to occur without similar growth in transport. Before...