Real estate bubbles have attracted much attention in the research literature following substantial growth in prices. Given the recent subprime mortgage crisis, this article is concerned with the related problem of possible bubbles in rural land values, given that at the margin urban real estate...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine whether or not financial repression exists in the saving and investment activities of farm households in rural areas of China. Design/methodology/approach – This paper empirically investigates repression in rural China using the McKinnon-Shaw...

China has a long history of taxing agriculture, with special levies on output. Whether farm households are taxed on a lump-sum basis or as a proportion of output is an important issue. This paper develops a theoretical model to understand better the effects of the lump-sum and proportional...

This article uses the case method of research to analyze the strategies and strengths of independent, domestically owned, successful medium-sized processing companies in Canada. The assessment of company strengths is based on responses from open-ended interviews and a questionnaire. All...

Commodity futures prices and volatility increased dramatically from 2006 to 2008, following a period during which index traders, a class of large investment funds, took on massive commodity futures positions. This article presents a method to reveal the extent to which index trader trading...

Using panel data from Illinois grain farmers, a direct test of the relationship between income risk and farm consumption behavior is conducted. The estimation results indicate that income risk significantly affects farm consumption and the results are robust using alternative risk measures. This...

The economics of agro-terrorism has not been fully developed within the economics literature, yet with increasing concerns about agro-terrorism it is important to understand how consumers will generally respond. This article presents an overview of food safety issues, and develops an economic...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether negative incentives in the pay-for-performance mechanism would trigger loan officers to strategically reject potentially good loans. If so, what is the feasible solution to alleviate the problem. Design/methodology/approach A framed...