In this paper we simulate changes in crop land allocations made by farmers in Southern Spain due to the implementation of a flat-rate subsidy. In order to reproduce farmers' decision-making process, we first group farmers by farm size into three categories and then elicit a general utility...

Public R&D stock is considered as quasi-fixed input in a variable cost function. Its shadow price allows to measure the long run optimal level thus explicitly assessing the hypothesis of under (over) investment. Two alternative R&D prices are defined depending on whether the social or private...

The study evaluates the efficiency of government intervention using a vertical structured model including imperfectly competitive agricultural input markets, the bread grain market, and the imperfectly competitive food industry. To test for policy efficiency the actually observed bread grain...

In Ethiopia, growth in cereal production is accompanied by a more than proportionate increase in the standard deviation of production. This study applies descriptive and variance decomposition procedures to determine the sources of increased instability in cereal production in order to show...

Identifying ways to increase market participation by smallholder producers requires identifying variables that influence market access. This is usually achieved using probit estimation. An important phenomenon affecting entry decision-making is the entry decision of a 'similar' household, where...

This paper addresses the potential for interlinked credit/input/output marketing arrangements for cash crops to promote food crop intensification. Using panel survey data from Kenya, we estimate a household fixed-effects model of fertilizer use per hectare of food crops. Results indicate that...

This paper analyses the economics of biodiversity conservation in the context of a tropical ecosystem in India, where coffee is the main competitor for land use.Using primary data covering a cross section of coffee growers,the study notes that the opportunity costs of biodiversity conservation...

We analyse the evolving pattern of Hungary's agri-food trade using recently developed empirical procedures based on the classic Balassa index and its symmetric transformation. The extent of trade specialisation exhibits a declining trend; Hungary lost comparative advantage for a number of product...

This paper examines changes in agricultural productivity in 10 Subsaharan countries. The relative performance of agricultural sector was gauged using data envelopment analysis. From a panel data set of the 10 countries which included the 28-year period 1972-1999, mathematical programming methods...

Proposals for agricultural trade reform put forward by the main protagonists remain far apart, with little sign of convergence. In an attempt to progress the negotiations towards a successful outcome, the chairman of the WTO Committee on Agriculture has proposed a compromise. The alternative...