We examine the causal relationships between ethanol production and the agricultural economy and rural incomes in the United States for 1981 through 2010. We use bivariate cointegration and Granger causality procedures and account for two structural breaks in ethanol production in the analysis,...

Sustainability science is an emerging field directed at advancing sustainable development. Informed by recent scholarship and institutional experiments, we identify key roles for economists and encourage their greater participation in this research. Our call to collaborative action comes from...

Consumers’ taste and preference for differentiated cocoa based on darkness and flavour quality has been rising over the years. Added value of such specialty cocoa is expressed by consumers’ willingness to pay more than the standard commodity price for the attributes and associations such as...

Markets for high-value agricultural commodities are growing and can contribute to reducing rural poverty. However, the poor may be unable to participate in such markets, and adverse environmental impacts may counterbalance short-term benefits. Hence, policies are needed that help reducing...

Marginality is a complex phenomenon resulting from the specific natural, economic as well as socio-cultural attributes of individual regions. It includes impossibility (of majority) of the population living in a given territory to integrate itself into the main developmental trends (e. g. Moller...

This paper aims at analyzing business services in bioenergy investments and innovations on farms in the Northern Ostrobothnia region in Finland. Finance into research of bioenergy has strongly increased during the last years both in Finland and Europe. Primary focus of this research has been so...

The multifunctional concept became one of the most important directions of EU agriculture development. The success of multifunctional agriculture is based on growing demand for non-commodity outputs. The endogenous values of rural areas that used to be explored mainly by agriculture are turning...