The expansion of a given land use may affect deforestation directly if forests are cleared to free land for this use, or indirectly, via the displacement of other land-use activities from non-forest areas towards the forest frontier. Unlike direct land conversion, indirect land-use changes...

It is commonly believed that the response of the price of corn ethanol (and hence of the price of corn) to shifts in biofuel policies operates in part through market expectations and shifts in storage demand, yet to date it has proved difficult to measure these expectations and to empirically...

Since the 2007-08 food crisis, many thoughtful analyses have addressed the causes and impacts of high and volatile international food prices and proposed solutions to the crisis. These studies have covered global as well as local food price dynamics and policy reactions. The food price problem...

Understanding how producers make decisions to allot acreage among crops and how decisions about land use are affected by changes in prices and their volatility is fundamental for predicting the supply of staple crops and, hence, assessing the global food supply situation. The innovations of the...

Transaction costs play a key role in the behaviour of smallholders in developing countries. We exploit the quasi experimental design of the introduction of an additional tobacco auction floor in Malawi in order to investigate the impact of a reduction in transaction costs and improved market...

We measure the impact of the Farmers Income Diversification Program (FIDP), an EU funded program implemented in Malawi from late 2005 onwards, aiming at increasing agricultural productivity, diversification, value addition, commercialization and trade of subsistence farmers. The geographical...

Price controls are measures that can significantly affect the sectors subject to such policies. Using a dynamic general stochastic equilibrium model with two types of agents: farmers and city dwellers, calibrated to Bolivia, it is shown that with falling productivity in the agricultural sector,...

We develop a structural econometric model to study the impacts of El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) on Colombian coffee production, exports and price. Our empirical specification is consistent with an economic model of the coffee market that, in the short-run, is characterized by a...

The high volatility of the world cocoa price makes the millions of cocoa farmers in the developing world highly vulnerable to poverty. A large volatility in the value of an agricultural commodity is linked to the inelasticity of its supply or demand. Therefore, we test the hypothesis that the...

Food safety represents a current topic, with significant implications and diverse approaches within the specialized literature. In the context of globalization and integration of agricultural markets, the necessity of guaranteeing food safety is imperative for the functionality of contemporary...