Small and medium enterprises are an important factor in the East African economies especially with respect to employment. The increasing competition through globalisation puts them under considerable pressure. Through the rapid spread of information and communication technologies (ICT) and ever...

The U.S. live hog production has undergone a significant structural change characterized by a trend toward larger operations. Experts argue that there is a cost advantage for larger farms due to industrialization and increased management intensity. One important element in production, mainly for...

This article tests the efficiency of the hog options market and assesses the impact of the 1996 contract redesign on efficiency. We find that the hog options market is efficient, but some options yielded excess returns during the live hogs period but not during the lean hogs period. Our findings...

This study examines the dynamic effects of grain prices and energy prices on catfish feed prices and the price of food-sized catfish at the farm level. Using the autoregressive distributed lag model and bounds testing procedure, a long-run relationship between feed and farm prices and their...

Contributed Paper presented at the International Conference on Agriculture Of Ouagadougou (BURKINA FASO), December 4-6, 2010.

This study investigated the efficiency and productivity change of a sample of food distribution units (MERCAs) in Spain over the 1.997-1.999 period, applying non-parametric frontier methodology in a sales efficiency framework. We specified a mean sales model composed of two blocks of variables,...

The object of the present paper is to analyse productivity incorporating quality-environmental changes in marketing co-operatives. Firstly, it reviews competitiveness factors in the current European agri-food market, especially in relation to the fruit and vegetables sector. Secondly, the...

This paper employs bootstrapping to correct for bias and to construct confidence intervals for Malmquist TFP indices derived with DEA. It uses these results to investigate the productivity change in Polish agriculture during a crucial period of the country's transition to a market economy,...

This report has four parts. The first part focuses on the changing environment in which the international wheat research system functions in developing countries. The authors describe recent trends in developing country wheat production against projected demand for wheat. Next, they present...

Studies of total factor productivity in livestock production are rare, but when available provide useful information especially in the context of developing countries such as China where livestock is becoming more important in the domestic agricultural economy. We estimate total factor...