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...

With declining Irish potato production trends in Kenya this paper identifies and analyses factors that influence the economic efficiency of smallholder Irish potato producers in Kenya by drawing on data from random sample of 130 smallholder farmers from Nyandarua North district. A dual...

This paper has examined Pareto efficiency of household resources allocation and the appropriateness to use gender-specific models rather than unitary model while investigating economic performance ofmen and women managers of separate plots within horticultural households in Senegal, West...

Household characteristics are commonly used to explain variation in smallholderefficiency levels. The underlying assumption is that differences in intended behaviorare well described by such variables, while there is no a priori reason that this is thecase. Moreover, heterogeneity in farmer...

Commercial rice imports have accounted for approximately 61%, food aid in rice accounted for about 2%, and domestic rice accounted for some 37% per annum of rice consumption in Ghana over the four years between 2000 and 2003. Compared to the 1990s, these figures show a gradual decline in the...

The measurement of productivity fluctuations has been the focus of decades-long interest. In addition to broad structural forces driving productivity changes, there is more recent interest in measuring and identifying the heterogeneous forces driving these changes. A major force is...

This study uses a unique firm-level dataset to examine how falling trade costs from 1993-2001 affected entry, exit, productivity, and exporting in the Korean manufacturing sector. We verify many of the predictions of recent heterogeneous-firm models of international trade. For example, falling...

The sugar industry in the island of St. Kitts came to a close in 2005 and so too did a long period of monoculture and possibly a culture and lifestyle of a people that affectionately refer to their country as Sugar City. Sugar was cultivated on approximately 4,500 hectares and there is now a...

The increasing use of production contracts in the hog sector has reduced the number of spot market transactions, raised concerns about price manipulation and helped to spur legislation requiring price reporting by packers. Using data from the 2002 and 2007 Censuses of Agriculture, this study...

In recent decades there has been a substantial increase in the scale of production and the use of production contracts in the hog sector. This paper explores empirically whether these two phenomena are related by examining whether the use of production contracts has allowed finish hog operations...