Low soil fertility is a major concern in agricultural productivity and development policy discourse in sub-saharan Africa. The problem is exacerbated by government withdrawal from fertilizer input markets and the inability of private sector operators to fill the gap. This warranted a search for...

We are interested in three related questions:(1) How should accounting prices be estimated?(2) How should we evaluate policy change in animperfect economy? (3) How can we check whetherintergenerational well-being will be sustainedalong a projected economic programme? We do notpresume that the...

The word “convexity” is ubiquitous in economics, but absent fromeconomics. In this paper we explain why, and show what differenceit makes to economic analysis if ecosystem non-convexities aretaken seriously. A simple proof is provided of the connectionbetween “self-similarity” and...

This paper presents econometric evidence of the effects of economic incentives and institutions on national aggregate private agricultural R&D investments. A model is proposed and fitted to annual data for seven European Union countries, 1984-1995. We find strong impacts of both incentives and...

If markets for nature conservation services are to ensure an efficient supply, property rights need to be well defined, readily defended and tradeable. However, some of these services have ill defined property rights that are costly, if at all possible to defend. This limits the incentives for...

This paper presents an analysis of agricultural contracts using a transaction costs approach. We contend that in a context of modern agriculture, with well defined property rights, agricultural contracts must balance costs and benefits, aligning tenant and landlord incentives towards a similar...

This paper presents an analysis of agricultural contracts using a transaction costs approach. We contend that in a context of modern agriculture, with well defined property rights, agricultural contracts must balance costs and benefits, aligning tenant and landlord incentives towards a similar...

The goal of this paper is to understand the nature of the property rights associated with China's land tenure systems and to study the impact of these property rights on agricultural production efficiency. The results show that land tenure and associated property rights in rural China affect the...