This paper aims at assessing the relationship between ownership structure, performance and investmentactivity. In particular it studies how behavioural differences between farms related to ownership structureinfluence farms' investment activity and thus their further development potential...

This study aimed to identify the top performing and the bottom performing family farm businesses based upon business performance, and then compare and contrast the perceptions and attitudes towards acquiring management skills and attributes that lead to improved business performance. Using...

Farmers’ problems and co-ordination of agricultural activities cannot be solved simply by EU and/or government support, or by private market co-ordination institutions. Emerging producer groups and co-operatives seem vital in achieving bargaining power. Theoretically, and according to Western...

One word summarizes the current outlook for the U.S. economy. That word is confusion. First, we review the recent behavior of the U.S. economy. Ten years of economic expansion without a recession had led some to believe that we could have continual expansion without a recession. The year 2000...

Given today's increasingly competitive environment, firms in every industry are searching for new ways to increase their competitive advantage. Many firms have realized that, due to a variety of different reasons (e.g., fast-paced technological advances), significant performance improvements...

Data on agricultural and natural resource management typically have spatial patterns related to the landscapes from which they came. Consequently, econometric models designed to explain the determinants of humans' natural resource management practices or their outcomes often have spatial...

Static economic theory views the production and consumption sides of the economic environment separately as two unique activities. The distinction between the business and home aspects in the case of farming arose in economic theory and principles of analysis, especially because static theory...

Although most of the rice area in Indonesia is still prepared manually, since the early 1980s the government has promoted tractors for land preparation through subsidized loans. This has increased capital investment in agriculture; and for the farmers, the cost of owning and operatingtractor has...

This paper explores the link between cost and price in two irrigation schemes in Mali - the Office du Niger (ON), a large-scale gravity irrigation authority, and a number of small pump-irrigated fields at village perimeters along the Niger River (Petits Perimetres d'Irrigation Villagois). I...

The evaluation of USAID funded farming systems research projects must play an important role in the design of future projects if one is to build on past experience to improve project performance. The development of an institutional memory is particularly important as FSR is new and still taking...