The study examines the effect of agricultural policy reforms on income variability of Swiss farmers. The observed heterogeneity in income risks across farms and time is explained with farm and regional characteristics. FADN data are used to construct coefficients of variation of total household...

The Swiss agricultural sectoral information and forecasting system (SILAS) is based on the PMP standard approach. The marginal cost functions are estimated by exogenous elasticities. Due to the lack of empirical data the elasticities were set for all activities to unity. Based on total milk...

The Swiss agent-based model (SWISSland) claims to depict as realistically as possible the 50 000 family farms comprising the whole of Swiss agriculture in all their heterogeneity as regards farm and cost structures as well as farm decision-making behaviour and interactions, with the aim of...

The development of multi-agent models for agriculture has allowed the inclusion of farm decision-making behaviour and interactions in the simulation of smaller agricultural regions. Important methodological impact for this has come in particular from scientists from Germany. Currently under...

The objective of this article is to analyse the trends in on-farm labour use, including own family labour, hired labour and contract work, and to assess the factors driving their evolution in France and in Switzerland during 1990-2007. A particular attention is given to agricultural policies,...

The switch from market-support to direct payments in Switzerland had impacts on the income distribution among farmers. In this paper, the distributional effect of the switch as a whole and of the different kinds of direct payments are elaborated through a presentation of different decomposed...

Depopulation of rural areas can entail negative externalities. This paper examines, inter alia, the influence of the farming system on depopulation processes. The population change in rural communities in Switzerland (family-based farming system) and in the German Land Mecklenburg-Western...