This paper investigates the impacts of cotton marketing reforms on farm productivity, a key element for poverty alleviation, in rural Zambia. The reforms comprised the elimination of the Zambian cotton marketing board that was in place since 1977. Following liberalization, the sector adopted an...

In this paper we analyze the effects of wealth inequality on the provision of public goods and management of common-property resources (CPR) when there are market imperfections in inputs that are complementary in production to the collective good. We show that for public goods inequality impedes...

The world demand for clean and renewable energy is growing, which is a response to stringent environmental policies aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions; price instability on the world energy markets and declining fossil energy resource availability. The main goal of the current study is...

In this paper we develop an applied general equilibrium framework for assessing socio-economic impacts of alternative renewable energy policies and apply it to the bioenergy sector. The policy scenarios are assessed in a comparative static analysis. The numerical simulation results allow us to...

World population is projected to reach almost 8 billion people around the year 2025 (UN 1999). This expected increase has raised considerable debate about the world's ability to meet future food needs (Rosegrant et. al. 2001a; Scanes and Miranowski 2004). However, food is only one serious concern....

Cultivated capital lies at the heart of concerns about sustainable development for 3 reasons: First, sustaining agricultural productivity is essential to meeting the world’s still growing demand for food. Without adequate food consumption, nutrition and labour productivity are impaired, which...

Poverty and food security in most countries are highly heterogeneous phenomena, making it common to find wide spatial variability. Both types and depth of poverty, measured in a variety of ways, vary between and within countries, regions or other geographic and administrative units. Spatial...

We study the impact of uncertainty on the strategies and dynamics of symmetric noncooperative games among players who exploit a non-excludable resource that reproducesunder uncertainty. We focus on a particular class of games that deliver a unique Nash equilibrium in linear-symmetric strategies...

The present paper deals with the role of political authorities and institutions in explaining growth failures. We aim to search answers for three related questions: is there a natural resources curse? Are all types of natural resources exposed to a curse? Can good institutions, measured by a...

Site Specific Technologies (SST) can reduce environmental pollution caused by common agricultural practice. Using a case study for corn yields, we investigate the impact of climate change (CC) on profitability of SSTs. We find CC to increase spatial variability of soils with respect to optimal...