non farm income household welfare and sustainable land management in a less favoured area in the ethiopian highlands a bio economic model has been calibrated to the socio economic and biophysical characteristics of a less favoured area in the ethiopian highlands land degradation population growth stagnant technology and drought necessitates development of non farm employment opportunities in the area the model has been used to assess the impact of improved access to non farm income on household welfare agricultural production conservation investments and land degradation in the form of soil erosion the model simulations indicate that access to low wage off farm income is restricted by lack of employment opportunities since households otherwise would have engaged in more off farm wage employment than observed the simulations show that better unconstrained access to low wage non farm income has a substantial positive effect on household income total agricultural production crop and livestock production and farm inputs used are reduced when access to non farm employment is improved and thus increases the need to import food to the area access to non farm income reduces farm households incentives to invest in conservation and this leads to more overall soil erosion and more rapid land degradation even though intensity of production is reduced special policies are therefore needed to ensure land conservation and to sustain local food production

is there a future for small farms small farms are seriously challenged today in ways that make their future precarious marketing chains are changing and becoming more integrated and more demanding of quality and food safety this is creating new opportunities for farmers who can compete and link to these markets but threatens to leave many others behind in developing countries small farmers also face unfair competition from rich country farmers in many of their export and domestic markets the viability of many is further undermined by the continuing shrinkage of their average farm size and the spread of hiv aids is further eroding the number of productive farm family workers and leaving many children as orphans with limited knowledge about how to farm left to themselves these forces will curtail opportunities for small farms overly favor large farms and lead to a premature and rapid exit of many small farms adding to already serious problems of rural poverty and urban ghettos if small farmers are to have a viable future then there is a need for a concerted effort by governments ngos and the private sector to create a more enabling economic environment for their development appropriate interventions could unleash significant benefits in the form of pro poor agricultural growth in many developing countries and more than pay for themselves in terms of their economic and social return but they do not seem very likely at the moment and current trends are moving in the opposite direction

tenure security and land related investment evidence from ethiopia the authors use a large data set from ethiopia that differentiates tenure security and transferability to explore determinants of different types of land related investment and its possible impact on productivity while they find some support for endogeneity of investment in trees this is not the case for terraces transfer rights are unambiguously investment enhancing the large productivity effect of terracing implies that even where households undertake investments to increase their tenure security this may not be socially efficient in ethiopia government action to increase tenure security and transferability of land rights can significantly enhance rural investment and productivity

can unobserved land quality explain the inverse productivity relationship abstract an inverse relationship between both farm productivity and labor intensity and farm size is a common empirical finding in developing country agriculture the traditional explanation has been imperfect labor markets recently it has been suggested instead that the inverse relationship is a statistical artifact resulting from omitted land quality using a farm level data set from java i investigate whether omitted variable bias can explain the inverse relationship i show that the inverse relationship and accompanying wage responses are inconsistent with a model of neoclassical farm behavior that ignores omitted variable bias instrumental variables techniques yield parameter estimates in which the inverse relationship is eliminated and the estimated wage elasticities are more in line with economic theory further econometric investigation hints that a model of omitted land quality may be a possible source of the inverse relationship these results emphasize the importance of considering the sources of cross sectional variation in estimating microeconomic relationships

financial market efficiency in an agrarian economy microeconometric analysis of the pakistani punjab the shadow price of capital in production is a useful indicator of the efficacy of the rural financial system using data on participants and non participants in a small farm credit programme from the pakistani punjab this article estimates the shadow price of capital endogenous switching regressions techniques are employed to control for the likely heterogeneity of borrowers versus non borrowers results indicate that an individual selected at random from the population of small farmers would experience a 200 per cent rate of return on the first rupee borrowed from the small farm credit programme indicating a high shadow price of capital and a prima facie case for small farm credit programmes

rural nonfarm activities and agricultural crop production in nigeria although most rural households are involved in the farm sector the nonfarm sector has grown significantly in recent decades and its role in rural development has become increasingly important this article examines the effect of participation in nonfarm activities on crop expenses of farm households in nigeria the relationship is modeled using a nonseparable agricultural household model that suggests that participating in nonfarm activities can relax the credit constraints facing farm households and reduce risk thereby helping households improve farm production and smooth consumption over time the results show that participation in nonfarm activities by nigerian farmers has a positive and significant effect on crop expenses and in particular on payments for hired labor and inorganic fertilizers separate analysis of the six geopolitical zones in nigeria indicates that it is in the south south and south east zones where nonfarm participation appears to induce more hiring of labor the results support the hypothesis that nonfarm participation helps relax liquidity constraints but suggests how that liquidity is used is zone specific in general the results also indicate that liquidity is used more to pay for inputs into staple production as opposed to cash crops

using evidence of household income diversification to inform study of the rural nonfarm labor market in africa abstract the labor market literature in developing countries has seldom drawn on the studies of rural household income diversification this paper draws on such studies to inform future study of the rural nonfarm labor market in africa the review of evidence provides some surprising departures from traditional images of nonfarm activities of rural households among the most striking is the dominant importance in the majority of case study areas of nonfarm wage labor as compared to self employment of nonfarm sector earnings as compared to farm sector wage earnings and of local nonfarm earnings as compared to migration earnings the most worrying finding was the poor distribution of nonfarm earnings in rural areas despite the importance of these earnings to food security and farm investments this poor distribution implies significant entry barriers and market segmentation it is probable that this will lead over time to an increasingly skewed distribution of land and other assets in rural africa

access to capital and its impact on agrarian structure and productivity in kenya access to capital and its distribution across agents can profoundly shape the structure and performance of an agrarian market economy it is conceptually useful to distinguish between ex ante and ex post capital access ex ante capital access denotes the ability of agents to finance production costs e g labor and purchased inputs costs which must be paid ex ante that is prior to the actual realization of production ex post capital access that is access to capital after the realization of the production process is of particular importance as an insurance substitute in low income agrarian economies where contingency markets are imperfect buoyant ex post capital access would permit an individual to stabilize consumption year to year even as production fluctuates annually a number of theoretical models have ex

agrarian structure and agricultural practice typology and application to western sudan a typology of models that explain patterns of variation in farm endowments and farm practices and yields shows that insecurity in renting land financing constraints and the absence of insurance generate patterns of factor use quite different from the famous inverse relationship caused by labor supervision problems one might expect to observe positive relationships between wealth and yields village level data from western sudan confirm that such positive relationships are not a theoretical curiosity wealthy farmers have higher levels of output per hectare because they use more labor per hectare insurance and financing constraints appear to be the crucial market failures

the distributive impact of land markets in uganda abstract this article presents first hand evidence about land distribution and the impact of land markets in central uganda this area is characterized by unequal distribution of land inheritance rural rural migration and active land markets we show that land markets and particularly land purchases tend to reduce the initial inequality in the initial inherited distribution of land land purchases by landless farmers in their native village represent an important part of this adjustment

is there really a green paradox abstract in the absence of a co2 tax the anticipation of a cheaper renewable backstop increases current emissions of co2 since the date at which renewables are phased in is brought forward and more generally future emissions of co2 will decrease the effect on global warming is unclear green welfare falls if the backstop is relatively expensive and full exhaustion of fossil fuels is optimal but may increase if the backstop is sufficiently cheap relative to the cost of extracting the last drop of fossil fuels plus marginal global warming damages as then it is attractive to leave more fossil fuels unexploited and thus limit co2 emissions we establish these results by analyzing depletion of non renewable fossil fuels followed by a switch to a clean renewable backstop paying attention to timing of the switch and the amount of fossil fuels remaining unexploited we also discuss the potential for limit pricing when the non renewable resource is owned by a monopolist finally we show that if backstops are already used and more backstops become economically viable as the price of fossil fuels rises a lower cost of the backstop will either postpone fossil fuel exhaustion or leave more fossil fuel in situ thus boosting green welfare however if a market economy does not internalize global warming externalities and renewables have not kicked in yet full exhaustion of fossil fuel will occur in finite time and a backstop subsidy always curbs green welfare

land allocation in hyv adoption models an investigation of alternative explanations microeconomic theory provides four competing explanations for partial land allocation to new and traditional seed varieties in hyv adoption decisions input fixity portfolio selection safety first behavior and learning testing a general model that contains each as a special case suggests that they are jointly most likely to explain land allocation in the hyv adoption decisions of malawian smallholders yet when each explanation is tested to the exclusion of the others as is usually the case in the literature competing hypotheses are individually significant results suggest that employing approaches based on single explanations may lead to inappropriately narrow conclusions

rural market imperfections and the farm size productivity relationship evidence from pakistan the subject of this article is the relationships between farm size and productivity and between farm size and profitability in the developing countries the recent controversies over the inverse size output relationship are reviewed and a framework is provided that explains the inverse relationship based on plausible assumptions about imperfections in the markets for labor land credit and risk from this framework a set of testable hypotheses are derived the hypotheses are tested on recent farm level panel data from pakistan a strong inverse relationship between farm size and yield is present in the sample even when household fixed effects are used to account for unobserved heterogeneity moreover the suggested market imperfections framework is consistent with the data

empirical measurement of credit rationing in agriculture a methodological survey empirical analysis of rural credit market failure has been of key scientific and political interest in recent years the aim of this article is to give an overview of the various methods for measuring credit rationing that are employed in the literature furthermore the methods are subjected to a comparative evaluation of their specific strengths or shortcomings six approaches are distinguished measurement of loan transaction costs analysis of qualitative information collected in interviews analysis of quantitative information collected in interviews using the credit limit concept analysis of spill over effects with regard to secondary credit sources econometric household modeling and the econometric analysis of dynamic investment decisions an explicit comparison with a first best solution is impossible in the first three approaches since they essentially rely on a subjective assessment of borrowers access to credit based on qualitative or quantitative indicators the fifth and sixth approaches allow a rigorous interpretation in the framework of neoclassical equilibrium theory the fourth approach takes an intermediate position since spill over on segmented loan markets reveals a willingness to pay with regard to the supposedly less expensive but rationed primary source the approaches are fairly data demanding in general usually requiring specific data on loan transactions even so most approaches are applicable to cross sectional household data with the exception of the first all methods surveyed might plausibly be used to empirically detect credit rationing

impacts of low cost land certification on investment and productivity new land reforms are again high on the policy agenda and low cost propoor reforms are being tested in poor countries this article assesses the investment and productivity impacts of the recent low cost land certification implemented in the tigray region of ethiopia using a unique household and farm plot level panel data set with data from before and up to eight years after the reform alternative econometric methods were used to test and control for endogeneity of certification and for unobserved household heterogeneity significant positive impacts were found including effects on the maintenance of soil conservation structures investment in trees and land productivity copyright 2007 oxford university press

credit constraints and agricultural productivity evidence from rural rwanda while potentially negative impacts of credit constraints on economic development have long been discussed conceptually empirical evidence for africa remains limited we use a direct elicitation approach on a national sample of rwandan rural households to empirically assess the extent and nature of credit rationing in the semi formal sector and its impact using an endogenous switching model elimination of all constraints could increase output by some 17 per cent implications for policy and research are spelled out

the impact of farm credit in pakistan both informal and formal loans matter in agriculture however formal lenders provide many more production loans than informal lenders often at a cost mostly loan default cost higher than what they can recover for example the agricultural development bank of pakistan adbp providing about 90 of formal loans in rural areas incurs high loan default costs yet like other governments the government of pakistan supports the formal scheme on the grounds that lending to agriculture is a high risk activity because of covariate risk hence such policies are often based on a market failure argument as farm credit schemes are subsidised policy makers must know if these schemes are worth supporting using a recent large household survey data from rural pakistan rural financial market studies or rfms we have attempted to estimate the effectiveness of the adbp as a credit delivery institution a two stage method that takes the endogeneity of borrowing into account is used to estimate credit impact results reveal that adbp contributes to household welfare and that its impact is higher for smallholders than for large holders nevertheless large holders receive the bulk of adbp finance the adbp is thus not a cost effective institution in delivering rural finance its cost effectiveness can be improved by reducing its loan default cost and partially by targeting smallholders in agriculture where credit yields better results

farm size and productivity in malawian smallholder agriculture this article contributes to the limited literature on farm size and productivity in smallholder agriculture in sub saharan africa farm survey data and the results from a linear programming farm household model provide evidence for a positive relationship between farm size and productivity in both labour scarce and land scarce smallholder farming in malawi during the 1980 s the absence of an inverse relationship is explained in terms of failures in land capital and produce markets with acute capital constraints which affect both capital and labour inputs on smaller farms implications for rural development policies are discussed

agricultural change rural labor markets and forest clearing an illustrative case from the philippines this paper studies the links between agricultural employment and upland activities at a tropical forest margin a model of lowland agricultural production is combined with a model of labor allocation on a representative upland farm to show how labor productivity agricultural wages and the returns from upland activities determine rates of forest clearing farm level data from the philippines demonstrate how agricultural intensification in the form of lowland irrigation development led to an increase in labor demand an increase in employment of upland inhabitants and small but statistically signi ficant reductions in rates of forest clearing

land inheritance and market transactions in uganda studies on the role of nonmarket land transactions remain limited this paper addresses two questions is land inheritance driven by underdeveloped land markets how does land inheritance influence land disposal and acquisition we use a switching regression model on household data from rural uganda we find that the initially landless or near landless households due to little or no land inheritance obtain land through land markets while those that are land rich dispose of land through land sales and bequests the results suggest that a process of land equalization is unfolding within the sample

should african rural development strategies depend on smallholder farms an exploration of the inverse productivity hypothesis in africa most development strategies include efforts to improve the productivity of staple crops grown on smallholder farms an underlying premise is that small farms are productive in the african context and that smallholders do not forgo economies of scale a premise supported by the often observed phenomenon that staple cereal yields decline as the scale of production increases this paper explores a research design conundrum that encourages researchers who study the relationship between productivity and scale to use surveys with a narrow geographic reach when policy would be better served with studies based on wide and heterogeneous settings using a model of endogenous technology choice the authors explore the relationship between maize yields and scale using alternative data since rich descriptions of the decision environments that farmers face are needed to identify the applied technologies that generate the data improvements in the location specificity of the data should reduce the likelihood of identification errors and biased estimates however the analysis finds that the inverse productivity hypothesis holds up well across a broad platform of data despite obvious shortcomings with some components it also finds surprising consistency in the estimated scale elasticities

on price risk and the inverse farm size productivity relationship abstract the oft observed inverse relationship between farm size and productivity has elicited several explanations having important policy and theoretical implications using advances in the analysis of price risk effects on producer behavior and a simple two period model of an agricultural household that both produces and consumes under price uncertainty at the time labor allocation decisions are made this paper demonstrates analytically that a non degenerate land distribution and price risk can together produce an inverse relationship even absent any of the more common explanations empirical evidence from madagascar confirms the plausibility of this intuitive explanation for the phenomenon

supermarkets wholesalers and tomato growers in guatemala the article shows the asset related determinants and the impacts of the participation of small farmers in supermarkets versus traditional market channels in guatemala compared to farmers selling only to the traditional market channels farmers selling to supermarket channels are larger but are in the upper tier of the small farmer category have more capital and are much more specialized in commercial horticulture in general and in tomatoes in particular while they have higher yields they also have higher input use including use of chemicals in fact they severely overuse pesticides and fungicides moreover these greater input expenditures mean that their profit rates are roughly similar to those of farmers in the traditional market channel supermarket channel farmers prefer the more demanding wholesale supermarket channel because it offers lower risks and lower transaction costs to market a variety of quality grades of tomatoes all year long in turn the supermarkets who do not buy direct but rather source from a few specialized dedicated wholesalers rely on this year round supply lower transaction costs and consistency of quality

meso economic filters along the policy chain understanding the links between policy reforms and rural poverty in latin america abstract the paper clarifies the meso economy concept by defining it as comprising both the market mechanisms and administrative procedures through which policy decisions and market signals trickle down to the household level three main bodies of literature are reviewed the policy oriented literature in which the meso economy was initially considered the transaction cost approach analyzing market and policy failures and the micro economy level of agricultural household models the paper develops a synthesis of macro meso and micro economic perspectives which focuses on the roles played by three levels of filters intervening along the policy chain implications for policy and research are drawn

when do increasing carbon taxes accelerate global warming a note on the green paradox abstract the green paradox by hans werner sinn suggests that increasing resource taxes accelerate global warming because resource owners increase near term extraction in fear of higher future taxation in this note we show that this effect does only occur for the specific set of carbon taxes that increase at a rate higher than the effective discount rate of the resource owners we calculate a critical initial value for the carbon tax that leads to a decreased cumulative consumption over the entire infinite time horizon applying our formal findings to carbon taxes for several mitigation targets we conclude that there is a low risk of a green paradox in case the regulator implements and commits to a permanently mal adjusted tax this remaining risk can be avoided by emissions trading scheme as suggested by sinn as long as the emission caps are set appropriately and the intertemporal permit market works correctly

productivity credit risk and the demand for weather index insurance in smallholder agriculture in ethiopia the article explores the relationship between fertilizer use and the demand for weather index insurance wii among smallholder farmers in ethiopia we examine whether fertilizer use is profitable under current smallholder production conditions whether risk related factors affect fertilizer use and we estimate the returns to inputs in the agricultural production function in the absence of insurance we then study how these primitives of agricultural production functions relate to insurance demand the study compares a survey based estimate of willingness to pay with actual uptake for the weather insurance finding the stated and actual demand to be almost completely uncorrelated while those with high marginal returns to inputs say they would purchase insurance only those with low marginal returns actually do consistent with the stated purpose of the product as input insurance insurance demand proves to be highly responsive to the existence and amount of randomly allocated insurance vouchers jel classifications c83 g22 q12

effect of intergenerational asset transfers on land distribution in rural cambodia case studies of three rice growing villages after land reallocation in the early 1980s inequality in landholdings has re emerged in rural cambodia besides land sales and purchases intergenerational transfers of assets may foster inequality in landholdings among second generation 2g couples who having wed after the 1980s reallocation received no land from the government data analysis of three rice growing villages reveals that land received directly from parents accounts for 18 41 of inequality in landholdings among sample 2g couples although net land gain after marriage primarily through purchases is the largest contributor to the inequality nonland assets received from parents positively affect the net gain direct and indirect effects combined assets received from parents account for 35 57 of inequality in landholdings the effect of assortative matching of the acreage received from parents has hitherto been small

bargaining with random implementation an experimental study abstract we use a laboratory experiment to study bargaining with random implementation we modify the standard nash demand game so that incompatible demands do not necessarily lead to the disagreement outcome rather with exogenous probability q one bargainer receives his her demand with the other getting the remainder we use an asymmetric bargaining set favouring one bargainer and disagreement payoffs of zero and we vary q over several values our results mostly support game theory s directional predictions as with conventional arbitration we observe a strong chilling effect on bargaining for q near one extreme demands and low agreement rates increasing q reinforces the game s built in asymmetry giving the favoured player an increasingly large share of payoffs but also raising efficiency these effects are non uniform over sizable ranges increases in q have minimal effect but for some q small additional increases lead to sharp changes in results

farm productivity in rwanda effects of farm size erosion and soil conservation investments this paper examines the effects of farm size soil erosion and soil conservation investments on land and labor productivity and allocative efficiency in rwanda there were several key results first there is a strong inverse relationship between farm size and land productivity and the opposite for labor productivity for smaller farms there is evidence of allocative inefficiency in use of land and labor probably due to factor market access constraints second farms with greater investment in soil conservation have much better land productivity than average those with very eroded soils do much worse than average smaller farms are not more eroded than larger farms but have twice the soil conservation investments third land productivity benefits substantially from perennial cash crops and the gains to shifting to cash crops are highest for those with low erosion and high use of fertilizer and organic matter program and policy effort to encourage and enable farmers to make soil conservation investments to use fertilizer and organic matter and to participate in cash cropping of perennials will have big payoffs in productivity land markets that allow smaller farmers to buy land could also increase aggregate productivity

is there a farm size productivity relationship in african agriculture evidence from rwanda whether the negative relationship between farm size and productivity that is confirmed in a large global literature holds in africa is of considerable policy relevance this paper revisits this issue and examines potential causes of the inverse productivity relationship in rwanda where policy makers consider land fragmentation and small farm sizes to be key bottlenecks for the growth of the agricultural sector nationwide plot level data from rwanda point toward a constant returns to scale crop production function and a strong negative relationship between farm size and output per hectare as well as intensity of labor use that is robust across specifications the inverse relationship continues to hold if profits with family labor valued at shadow wages are used but disappears if family labor is rather valued at village level market wage rates these findings imply that in rwanda labor market imperfections rather than other unobserved factors seem to be a key reason for the inverse farm size productivity relationship

agrifood industry transformation and small farmers in developing countries summary this article introduces this special issue on the rapid transformation of the agrifood industry in developing countries and its effects on small farmers we review the literature from the late 1980s to the present and find evidence first of food processing then retail transformation and mixed evidence of impacts on small farmers both inclusion particularly with resource providing contracts and exclusion sometimes from scale constraint sometimes from inadequate non land assets the special issue papers contribute to the debate by confirming the mix of cases of inclusion and exclusion the cases are main in horticulture and dairy key hopes for smallholder development

spite and development in a wide variety of settings spiteful preferences would constitute an obstacle to cooperation trade and thus economic development this paper shows that spiteful preferences the desire to reduce another s material payoff for the mere purpose of increasing one s relative payoff are surprisingly widespread in experiments conducted in one of the least developed regions in india uttar pradesh in a one shot trust game the authors find that a large majority of subjects punish cooperative behavior although such punishment clearly increases inequality and decreases the payoffs of both subjects in experiments to study coordination and to measure social preferences the findings reveal empirical patterns suggesting that the willingness to reduce another s material payoff either for the sake of achieving more equality or for the sake of being ahead is stronger among individuals belonging to high castes than among those belonging to low castes because extreme social hierarchies are typically accompanied by a culture that stresses status seeking it is plausible that the observed social preference patterns are at least partly shaped by this culture thus an exciting question for future research is the extent to which different institutions and cultures produce preferences that are conducive or detrimental to economic development

testing household specific explanations for the inverse productivity relationship the inverse relationship between land productivity and farm size is an old and puzzling empirical regularity most explanations for this relationship rely on market imperfections that jointly determine the farm size and the household s shadow price of some productive inputs we use plot level data from the icrisat vls to assess whether these household specific theories can explain the puzzle the data exhibit plots of different sizes being simultaneously cropped by the same household the inverse relationship is shown to hold true with the same magnitude across the plots of each household thus cross household heterogeneity does not suffice to explain the puzzle

credit market imperfections and the distribution of policy rents this article shows that credit market imperfections have important implications for the distribution of policy rents in a model with land as fixed factor and credit market imperfections when an area payment is given land rents go up by more than the subsidy on aggregate farms may lose from the subsidy the results depend on the extent to which subsidies have direct and indirect effects on the credit constraints on whether farms rent or own land and on farm heterogeneity

new perspectives on farm size and productivity abstract the farm size and productivity debate has been limited by the focus on land or labor productivity generally showing respective productivity advantages to smaller or larger sized farms our purpose is to provide new perspectives on the debate by bringing together evidence from a set of novel case studies in both rich and poor countries common to them are the adoption of total factor productivity tfp as the comparative performance measure and the reliance on panels of farm micro data the present article presents a synthesis of findings from five case studies in i malawi tanzania and uganda ii bangladesh iii brazil iv australia and v the united states the preponderance of evidence from these studies suggests that there is no single economically optimal agrarian structure rather it appears to evolve with the stage of economic development certain farm sizes face relative productivity advantages such as small farms in africa but with economic and market growth that smallholder advantage will likely attenuate moving toward constant and eventually increasing returns to size yet importantly small farms may be quite dynamic and need not be a drag on agricultural growth until perhaps well into the development process

equilibrium credit rationing of small farm agriculture it is often argued that externally imposed contractual restrictions lead to inequitable credit rationing this paper argues that unrestricted laissez faire markets may also inequitably ration credit a formal model which grants borrowers autonomy in credit application and use demonstrates that adverse incentive and selection effects may cause banks to endogenously impose interest rate restrictions and ration small farms out of the credit market consequently liberalization of financial markets may be insufficient to guarantee small farms access to credit

investment and abandonment behavior of rural households an empirical investigation this article uses models of irreversible investment under uncertainty to examine the investment and abandonment behavior of poor rural households it considers the decision of ugandan coffee farming households to invest in or abandon coffee trees the observed levels of investment and abandonment are found to be consistent with models of investment that allow for irreversibility uncertainty fixed costs and liquidity constraints the findings highlight the importance of addressing volatility irreversibility fixed costs and liquidity constraints in order to increase households responsiveness to changes in the fundamentals and to enable households to recover from shocks to their capital stock

malthus controverted the role of capital and technology in growth and environment recovery in kenya abstract investment in technological improvements coupled with management innovations and skills are commonly held to lead to growth rates which outpace population growth although this applies to both industry and agriculture anderson 1990 typical farm surveys in developing countries neglect to analyze fixed investments or the quality of management this paper provides a nonmathematical case study and model from kenya of the way in which investments in technological change and especially in land improvement have enabled rural incomes per capita to grow substantially with improved environmental conservation through the interactions of increased population density improved information and market opportunities population density and investment are shown to be critical interrelated factors investments require maintenance expenditures these are included in social cost benefit analysis but it is not always realized that labor on maintenance may have a rising opportunity cost which farmers take into account when selecting technologies although the major part of expenditures are made and managed by farmers government investments to stimulate and complement them are required as on the farm this requires wise management of recurrent and maintenance costs if the benefits of investment are to be lasting

the role of carbon capture and sequestration policies for climate change mitigation this paper takes the policy failure in establishing a global carbon price for efficient emissions reduction as a starting point and analyzes to what extent technology policies can be a reasonable second best approach from a supply side perspective carbon capture and storage ccs policies differ substantially from renewable energy policies they increase fossil resource demand and simultaneously lower emissions we analyze ccs and renewable energy policies in a numerical dynamic general equilibrium model for settings of imperfect or missing carbon prices we find that in contrast to renewable energy policies ccs policies are not always capable of reducing emissions in the long run if feasible ccs policies can carry lower social costs compared to renewable energy policies in particular when second best policies are only employed temporally in case fossil resources are abundant and renewable energy costs low renewable energy policies perform better our results indicate that a pure ccs policy or a pure renewable energy policy carry their own specific risks of missing the environmental target a smart combination of both however can be a robust and low cost temporary second best policy

the relation between farm size and farm productivity the role of family labor supervision and credit constraints abstract the paper shows that if the performance of hired farmhands is affected by supervision from family members and if the availability of credit is dependent on the amount of land owned then a systematic positive or negative relationship between per acre yields and farm size will prevail a model with no supervision effects on labor productivity would predict that yields are unaffected by farm size the paper also investigates the relation between land utilization and owned holding size when land rental possibilities are limited results are shown to be compatible with various observed patterns in ldcs