In the hard rock areas of India, overdraft of groundwater has led to negative externalities, increases costs of groundwater irrigation and causes welfare losses. Groundwater markets are slowly emerging as niche markets to improve water distribution and to mitigate water scarcity by stimulating...

In many countries growing water scarcity puts pressure on the irrigation sector, as main consumptive user, to improve performance. In this context, the need for research on institutional policy options for improved water allocation and governance is more and more recognized. Exante evaluation of...

In the light of growing water scarcity appropriate institutional arrangements are needed to complement technical interventions, in order to ensure more efficient use and allocation of water in agriculture. A theoretically interesting institutional intervention is the installation or improvement...

Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) have become a popular instrument in the last decades and this growing trend is also clearly evident in Brazil. However, challenges related to implementation of these schemes are often underestimated. Any guarantee that a payment will secure or provide such a...

Farmers in sub-Saharan Africa are constrained by large transaction costs associated with marketing of their livestock. However, transaction costs are often not taken into account in the analysis of factors hampering the development of livestock marketing in this region. This article empirically...

Apart from the difficulty to attract new members, leakage of sales outside the cooperative is a major challenge for the coffee cooperatives in Rwanda. Local (independent) traders still constitute a major market for coffee producers. Yet, cooperatives also accept the produce from non-members and...