The paper's background is a revival of the historically dominant narrative on the large-scale and plantation farming (LSF and PF) in Africa, in reaction to the contemporary phenomenon of 'land grabbing'. The historical antecedents of this narrative are examined and its central contentions - that...

Rice innovations are technologies and practices extensively adopted so as to change production practices and productivity. This paper documents the changes in rice productivity, policy and institutions in the last 100 years and identifies the technological change that may have affected rice...

Die Pachtpreise in den neuen Bundesländern liegen deutlich unter denen im früheren Bundesgebiet. Nach der neoklassischen Theorie müssten die Pachtpreisunterschiede alleine durch die ökonomische Wertgrenzproduktivität der Flächen zu erklären sein. Einer der Wegbereiter der...

While the majority of micro studies finds that rural education increases agricultural productivity, various recent cross-country regressions analyzing the determinants of agricultural productivity were only able to detect an insignificant or even surprisingly negative effect of schooling. In...

Following the rural reform in 1978 a series of agricultural reforms were introduced in China. The main aim of these reforms was to create incentives for the farmers to produce more. The nineties' price reform that was aimed at deregulating the agricultural market eventually resulted in a huge...

When agricultural productivity improves, farmers may react by expanding farming and further encroach on forest lands, or they may choose to intensify and produce more output with less land. We specify the conditions under which agricultural productivity can have such ambiguous effects on...

This paper projects global food supply and demand to the year 2025, with a particular emphasis on Asia. Technological change is found to be the critical factor in determining whether or not food prices will preserve their long-run, downward trend, as well as the likely patterns of trade and...