Patterns in price adjustment in response to information are important to market practitioners. This study looks at cowpea real wholesale price adjustment patterns in Bolgatanga, Wa, Makola and Techiman markets in Ghana. Using Techiman as the central market, a threshold autoregressive test for...

Interspatial and intertemporal grain distribution in Ghana is a private sector activity carried out mainly by traders. These traders sometimes collude to maximize their joint profits. By so doing they influence the conduct of the grains market. To examine the effect of their actions on the...

The publication describes outcomes of a study conducted in 2007/08 to analyze the bottlenecks affecting the production and deployment of maize seed in eastern and southern Africa. The objectives of the study were to provide a better understanding of the factors limiting the production and...

Following the liberalization and restructuring of the seed sector, the maize seed industry in eastern and southern Africa has witnessed a proliferation of private seed companies. Whereas the total number of registered maize seed companies in major maize producing countries increased four-fold...

The recent economic downturn in Zimbabwe impoverished the majority of households. To assist vulnerable rural households improve their food security, the British Department for International Development implemented a seed relief program from 2003/2004 to 2005/2006 that emphasized recycling of...

This paper proposes a novel approach for estimating farm level seed demand in developing countries. In principle, a farmer views an improved seed as a derived input embodying production attributes and a technology embodying consumption characteristics and jointly decides on its adoption and the...

Input technological change, fundamental to rural transformation, sometimes bypasses some rural populations because farmers are often reluctant to use new inputs due to production and price risks that could render their use unprofitable. The level of wealth of the household significantly relates...

This paper proposes a new approach for estimating the demand for seed within a developing country context where only improved seeds are sold but adoption rates for improved varieties low. A farmer views an improved seed firstly as a derived input embodying production attributes and secondly, as...

Researchers have traditionally applied censored regression models to estimate factors influencing farmers' decisions to adopt improved technologies for the design of appropriate intervention strategies. The standard Tobit model, commonly used, assumes spatial homogeneity implicitly but the...

Production and price risks that could render input use unprofitable sometimes prevent rural households from benefiting from input technological change. The household's ability to cope with such risks and hence benefit from input technological change is often positively related to its wealth or...