Like many other African countries in the 1980s, Burkina Faso was urged to engage in a far-reaching liberalization of its state-led cotton sector. Yet unlike most of its neighbors, the Burkinabè government rejected both the status quo and wholesale liberalization, and instead embarked on a more...

Direct commands, market based, or combined, whichever is the government's mean of intervention, is expected to raise political lobbying and pressure. This study offers a political-economic model of an industry, which is regulated by an integrated system of both direct and market based policies....

We characterize the dynamics of energy markets in which energy is derived from polluting (fossil) and clean (solar) resources. The analysis is based on geometric optimal control considerations. An important feature of solar energy technologies is that their cost of supply is predominantly due to...

Helping to sustain a viable rural sector, rural tourism enjoys public support in many countries. We claim that due to club-good and agglomeration externalities in the rural accommodation market, public support should be integrated in a broader local development policy that regulates the number...

The cotton boom in Burkina Faso consisted of a growth in cotton land shares together with an overall increase in total cultivated land. This paper examines the impact of institutional changes in the cotton sector on the evolution of smallholders’ land-use decisions. The empirical analysis is...

Turkmenistan, like all Central Asian countries, is critically dependent on water because of its arid desert climate. The Amudarya, flowing from the Pamir and Tien-Shan Mountains to the tragically dying Aral Sea, is the main source of water for all agricultural and non-agricultural uses in...

The duality of farm structure in Moldova is manifested by the existence of a relatively small number of large corporate farms at one extreme and a very large number of small and very small family farms at the other. “Medium-sized” family farms, the backbone of any market agriculture,...

We consider the consequences of a shared brand name such as geographical names used to identify high quality products, for the incentives of otherwise autonomous firms to invest in quality. We contend that such collective brand labels improve communication between sellers and consumers, when the...

In this paper the structure of the rural economy in Armenia is explored from a household perspective. The paper draws on the livelihoods framework, recognizing the different capitals and activities that support rural households' livelihood strategies. Ownership of capitals and access to...

Welfare measures under threats of environmental catastrophes are studied using the "parable" apparatus of Weitzman and Lofgren [22]. The occurrence probability of the catastrophic event is driven (at least partly) by anthropogenic activities such as natural resource exploitation. Without...