the impact of agricultural research in africa aggregate and case study evidence abstract this paper presents case study results and aggregate data to evaluate the impact of research in african agriculture of 32 case studies all but eight report annual returns over 20 and many are far higher with most gains arising in the late 1980s and 1990s spurred by policy reforms and changing incentives these innovations have led to sustained growth in aggregate cereal crop yields since 1985 africa s belated green revolution is based on new varieties often with early maturation for drought escape complemented by new management techniques typically labor intensive efforts to conserve soil moisture and build soil fertility

the impact of integrated aquaculture agriculture on small scale farms in southern malawi sustainable agricultural intensification is an urgent challenge for sub saharan africa one potential solution is to rely on local farmers knowledge for improved management of diverse on farm resources and integration among various farm enterprises in this article we analyze the farm level impact of one recent example namely the integrated aquaculture agriculture iaa technologies that have been developed and disseminated in a participatory manner in malawi based on a 2004 survey of 315 respondents 166 adopters and 149 nonadopters we test the hypothesis that adoption of iaa is associated with improved farm productivity and more efficient use of resources estimating a technical inefficiency function shows that iaa farms were significantly more efficient compared to nonadopters iaa farms also had higher total factor productivity higher farm income per hectare and higher returns to family labor

the response of worker effort to piece rates we measure the elasticity of worker effort with respect to changes in the piece rate using panel data collected from the payroll records of a british columbia tree planting firm our data contain information on daily worker productivity and the piece rate received over a five month period using a structural model to control for the endogeneity of the piece rate we estimate this elasticity to be approximately 2 14 we also calculate a nonstructural lower bound to this elasticity equal to 0 77 structural estimation also allows us to perform policy experiments and to compare firm profits under alternative compensation systems our results suggest that profits would increase by at least 17 percent were the firm to implement the optimal static contract as predicted by principal agent theory this increase in profits would be due to capturing worker rents after the revelation of private information over ability yet only a negligible proportion of these rents could be captured while inducing workers to reveal ability truthfully suggesting that dynamic considerations were important in determining the firm s actual choice of contract

the impact of research led agricultural productivity growth on poverty reduction in africa asia and latin america abstract twenty percent of the world s population or 1 2 billion live on less than 1 per day 70 of these are rural and 90 are in asia and sub saharan africa research led technological change in agriculture generates sufficient productivity growth to give high rates of return in africa and asia and has a substantial impact on poverty currently reducing this number by 27 million per annum whereas productivity growth in industry and services has no impact the per capita cost of poverty reduction by means of agricultural research expenditures in africa is 144 and in asia 180 or 50 cents per day but this is covered by output growth by contrast the per capita cost for the richer countries of latin america is over 11 000

incentives and moral hazard plot level productivity of factory operated and outgrower operated sugarcane production in ethiopia we investigate the unique contractual arrangement between a large ethiopian sugar factory and its adjacent outgrower associations the only significant difference between the sugarcane production on the factory operated sugarcane plantation and on the outgrower operated plots is the remuneration system and thus the incentives to the workers we compare the productivity of the factory operated plantation with the outgrower operated plots based on a new cross sectional plot level data set that includes all plots that are operated by the sugar factory and its adjacent outgrower associations as sugar cane production depends on various exogenous factors that are measured as categorical variables e g soil type cane variety etc we estimate the production function by a nonparametric kernel regression method that takes into account both continuous and categorical explanatory variables without assuming a functional form and without imposing restrictions on interactions between the explanatory variables in order to obtain meaningful productivity measures we impose monotonicity in input quantities using the constrained weighted bootstrapping cwb method our results show that outgrower operated plots have ceteris paribus a statistically and economically significantly higher productivity than factory operated plots which can be explained by outgrowers having stronger incentives to put more effort into their work than the employees of the sugar factory

natural resource management and household well being the case of posaf ii in nicaragua summary measuring the impact of natural resource programs is a key element in the formulation and implementation of policies designed to promote farm income while enhancing the quality of the surrounding environment in this paper we analyze the economic impact of natural resource technologies delivered by the socio environmental and forestry development program ii posaf ii in nicaragua we use cross sectional data for 1 483 households from 212 treated and control communities results obtained from propensity score matching psm ordinary least squares ols weighted least squares regression wls based on psm and instrumental variables iv regression indicate that posaf ii has had a positive impact on the total value of agricultural production of beneficiary farmers an internal rate of return analysis supports the hypothesis that increasing household income while encouraging the sustainable use of natural resources through the implementation of suitable management programs can be complementary development objectives

returns from research in economies with policy distortions hybrid sorghum in sudan conventional estimates of the economic return to agricultural research use market prices for the values of products and inputs on this basis economic rates of return are typically well above the cost of capital suggesting that more investment in research would be socially desirable but these estimates may be incorrect if as is often the case market prices are distorted by market failures or government policies and hence do not reflect social values this paper presents a simple partial equilibrium methodology with which to improve the measurement of social returns to research by taking account of multiple distortions in the market prices of products inputs and foreign exchange the method also takes account of variation in domestic and world prices making a product tradable in some years and nontradable in others the method is applied to the case of hageen dura 1 hd 1 sub saharan africa s first commercially successful hybrid sorghum hd 1 was released in the sudan in 1983 from the start of research in 1979 to 1992 the hd 1 breeding program had an estimated irr of 97 when all major policies in the sorghum market the fertilizer market and the exchange rate are taken into account the high rate of return to hd 1 research was due to the program s low cost and rapid payoff pointing to the potential value of small adaptive research programs taking full advantage of foreign technology and genetic material to produce locally appropriate crosses in a short period of time even in the highly distorted economies of africa such programs can yield very high payoffs

adapting household behavior to agricultural technology in west bengal india wage labor fertility and child schooling determinants the emergence of the high yielding varieties hyvs as alternatives to traditional varieties tvs of wheat rice and several other crops has been a major event in many developing countries during the last 2 decades the output income and employment augmenting effects of this modern technology have been documented in many regions of the world the existing studies have focused on aggregate economic indicators at national regional and sectoral levels analyses of technological change and household well being are now needed to explore the implications of this process for intrahousehold allocation of the resources among persons and activities the critical household activity is labor force participation in the market in own enterprise or in home production by male female and child members of the household these activities change as household demand for children changes and parents become able and willing to invest more in the health nutrition schooling and training of their children and thereby improve their productivity quality analysis of these interrelated household decisions helps to clarify efficient policies for rural development and to trace the societal repercussions of these policies ii background and objective although much has been written on the green revolution technology at the national and regional levels in india few studies have dealt with the eastern region of the country the question assumes special significance for the eastern indian states because of several factors first this region produces about three fourths of the country s output of rice the major food crop but the yield per acre is less than in other regions the new technology in rice came to this region at a later date

evaluating returns to agricultural research a review this paper reviews and compares the most common approaches used to evaluate public agricultural research investment ex post studies fall into two major groups a consumer and producer surplus analyses estimating average rates of return to research and b production function analyses estimating marginal rates of return to research ex ante studies fall into four groups a those using scoring models to rank research activities b those employing benefit cost analysis to establish rates of return to research c those using simulation models and d those using mathematical programming to select an optimal mix of research activities

adoption of agricultural innovations in developing countries a survey this paper reviews various studies which have provided a description and possible explanation to patterns of innovation adoption in the agricultural sector the survey points out that the tendency of many studies to consider innovation adoption in dichotomous terms adoption nonadoption may not be appropriate in many cases where the actual decisions are defined over a more continuous range more attention needs to be given to the socio cultural and institutional environment in area studies so that their interrelation with economic factors affecting adoption can be inferred the presence of several interrelated innovations is another aspect that needs to be considered more carefully in future research since a number of simultaneous decisions may be involved furthermore the possibility of regular sequential patterns in adopting components of a new technological package should be specifically addressed in future studies finally the impact of differential adoption rates on land holding distribution merits attention in future research

the impact of institutional investors on mergers and acquisitions in the united kingdom abstract in this paper we investigate the impact of institutional ownership on uk mergers and acquisitions we employ a comprehensive sample of m as conducted by uk acquirers from 2000 to 2010 thus including a full cycle of peak and trough in m a waves we find that institutional investors increase the likelihood of an m a to be a large cross border deal opting for full control moreover institutional ownership concentration and foreign institutional ownership increase the likelihood of cross border m as in addition we assess the influence of institutional shareholders investment horizon and find that while investment horizon have a negative influence in encouraging cross border m as the presence of long term investors encourages larger m as finally even after controlling for the 2007 08 financial crisis the market reacts negatively to the announcement of cross border m as

the role of education on the adoption of chemical fertiliser under different socioeconomic environments in ethiopia studies on input adoption consider education as one of the most important factors that affect adoption decisions however very little is known about the spill over effect of intra household education on the adoption process and about the impact of education on adoption decisions under different socioeconomic conditions we investigate these two issues using a discrete choice model the results indicate that the decision making process is a decentralised one in which educated adult members of the household actively participate in the decision making process this casts doubt on the traditional assumption that the household head is the sole decision maker the results reveal that there is a substantial and statistically significant intra household spill over effect of education on the adoption decision of households the results of the study also show that the coefficient of the education and the environment interaction variable is negative and statistically significant this demonstrates that education and socioeconomic environments could be substitutes in modern environments and complementary in traditional ones this implies that the expansion of education in traditional areas may be more attractive than in modern areas since education is usually the only means to enhance the ability of farmers to acquire synthesise and respond to innovations such as chemical fertiliser

information sophistication and foreign versus domestic investors performance abstract using an intraday transaction dataset with trader identity we study foreign and domestic investors trading activities and investment performance ahead of open ending events of taiwanese closed end funds simply buying the funds at a discount and holding until open ending generates large abnormal returns all information required to execute this strategy is made public so the events set up natural experiments to examine how investors trade holding constant access to information foreign investors are net buyers ahead of the open endings more than doubling their positions and earning large abnormal returns domestic investors are net sellers while the discounts are still large and forego large abnormal returns the results suggest that investor sophistication in interpreting the same information is potentially an important determinant of investment performance differences across foreign and domestic investors

learning by doing and learning from others human capital and technical change in agriculture household level panel data from a nationally representative sample of rural indian households describing the adoption and profitability of high yielding seed varieties hyvs associated with the green revolution are used to test the implications of a model incorporating learning by doing and learning spillovers the estimates indicate that i imperfect knowledge about the management of the new seeds was a significant barrier to adoption ii this barrier diminished as farmer experience with the new technologies increased iii own experience and neighbors experience with hyvs significantly increased hyv profitability and iv farmers do not fully incorporate the village returns to learning in making adoption decisions

efficiency in wine grape production comparing long established and newly developed regions of south africa efficiency partly based on technology is central to international competitiveness this article applies a stochastic frontier inefficiency model to a panel of 77 wine grape farms in south africa between 2005 and 2015 and allows the comparison of efficiency levels for the old established wine regions with those of newer entrants thus we investigate whether experience plus first choice of location matters more than the follower s advantage of newer technology in all regions a greater share of permanent labor and increased supervision raised efficiency while more inorganic fertilizer and less irrigation has the opposite effect innovations in trellising had insignificant effects except in the old regions but not replacing old vines reduced efficiency however a higher proportion of red varietals also lowered efficiency in the old regions due to a fall in the price of red wine as these farmers continued to concentrate on quality reds the new regions compensated for falling prices by increasing crop size with irrigation and fertilizer and extending the area planted but with less concern for quality this appears to be more successful in efficiency terms but as international demand for quality wine increases it may be a poor long term strategy

the influence of management characteristics on the technical efficiency of wheat farmers in eastern england technical efficiency of wheat farms in eastern england is measured through the estimation of a stochastic frontier production function using panel data for the 1993 1997 crop years variations in the technical efficiency index across production units are explained through a number of managerial and farm characteristic variables following battese and coelli 1995 empirical econ 20 325 332 and incorporating the spirit of rougoor et al 1998 agric econ 18 261 272 the technical efficiency index across production units ranges from 62 to 98 the objectives of maximising annual profits and maintaining the environment are positively correlated with and have the largest influence on technical efficiency moreover those farmers who seek information have more years of managerial experience and have a large farm are also associated with higher levels of technical efficiency future studies that seek to explain variation in technical efficiency should include further aspects of the managerial decision making process

identifying the interaction between stock market returns and trading flows of investor types looking into the day using daily data abstract this paper introduces a new method for identifying the simultaneity between returns and trading flows the proposed method enables us to identify the intraday interaction using daily data and provides measures of the information content of trading flows and their instantaneous response to public information and information revealed by market prices applying this method to daily data on investor types from the korea stock exchange we find significant intraday bi directional interaction between flows and returns and their latent common drivers altering some of the results of the previous literature based on cholesky assumptions thus we obtain a number of new insights concerning the behavior of investor types

modeling farmers decisions on tea varieties in vietnam a multinomial logit analysis this article analyzes households choice on tea varieties in vietnam by using a multinomial logit model the modeling takes into account the issue of unobserved individual heterogeneity and the endogeneity of some explanatory variables use of chemical and organic fertilizers the results show that important factors influencing the decision to adopt one type of tea varieties include income age household size farming contract and use of organic fertilizers but also membership of professional associations such as the tea association and the farmers union

does supervision matter some hypothesis tests using indian farm level data abstract a model is developed and estimated to test for heterogeneity of family and hired labor in agricultural production and to estimate the impact of employer supervision on the productivity of hired labor plot level data are used from a rice growing village in semi arid tropical india the hypothesis that family and hired labor are homogeneous inputs was rejected results indicate that family member supervision is required to increase hired labor productivity output loss attributable to operating at reduced supervision intensity was greater than 10 on over 40 of the plots

contract farming smallholders and rural development in latin america the organization of agroprocessing firms and the scale of outgrower production abstract this paper demonstrates how contract farming functions as an economic institution and explores the causes of the observed variation in the scale of outgrower production in latin america we outline how market imperfections and transaction costs influence the decision of agroprocessing firms to contract out vertically integrate or use spot markets to obtain raw product the paper demonstrates how market conditions are likely to be associated with particular outgrower characteristics under contract farming an analysis of the mexican frozen vegetable industry illustrates determinants of successful and unsuccessful small scale contracting and suggests alternative policies to promote contract farming with smallholders

economics of biological control of cassava mealybug in africa abstract pest populations of the cassava mealybug phenacoccus manihoti mat ferr homoptera pseudococcidae were reduced successfully by the biological control agent apoanagyrus epidinocarsis lopezi de santis hymenoptera encyrtidae throughout most of sub saharan africa the economics of the project were evaluated based on data from field trials socio economic surveys published results and financial information provided by the international institute of tropical agriculture iita and the national programmes costs and benefits for the biological control of p manihoti were calculated over 40 years 1974 2013 for 27 african countries for four different scenarios taking into account that impact by a lopezi and speed of the impact differ between ecological zones a reasonable calculation considering compounded interest resulted in a benefit cost ratio of about 200 when cassava was costed at world market prices and of about 370 740 when inter african prices were considered

do domestic investors have an information advantage evidence from indonesia using transaction data from the jakarta stock exchange i find three pieces of evidence which indicate that domestic investors have an information advantage over foreign investors first foreign investors systematically buy at higher and sell at lower intra day prices than domestic investors second foreign investors tend to sell prior to large positive returns finally the permanent impact of foreign purchases is smaller than that of domestic purchases over time prices at which foreign investors trade have worsened while foreign selling prior to positive returns has disappeared

closed end fund shares abnormal returns and the information content of discounts and premiums closed end funds discounts contain information in the sense that they can be used to construct portfolios that earn returns exceeding those predicted by the two factor capital asset pricing model the precise nature of the information contained in a discount is not clear however this paper provides evidence that the information contained in a discount is an incomplete prediction of the fund s likelihood of being open ended profitably thompson 18 investigated the extent to which closed end funds share price discounts and premiums relative to net asset value convey useable information about future rates of return on the funds shares he found that an ad hoc strategy of investing in portfolios of stocks selling at discounts significantly outperformed the returns predicted by the black 3 two factor asset pricing model in other words closed end fund discounts and premiums do contain information about future returns in addition to that captured by the benchmark model the precise nature of the information contained in the discounts and premiums is a mystery however this paper presents and tests a model of the information content of closedend fund discounts and premiums based upon the prospects for a form of organizational restructuring known as open ending the term open ending refers to a set of techniques for forcing a closed end fund s share price to its traditionally higher net asset value converting the fund to an open end fund merging the fund with an open end fund or liquidating the fund s assets and distributing the proceeds to the shareholders while both brauer 4 and brickley and schallheim 5 have shown that actual open endings involve significant benefits to shareholders the focus of this paper is on the valuation effects of the potential for open ending the analysis shows that the probability of profitably open ending a fund should affect the fund s market value that the discount is only one element in a larger information structure about the probability of openending and that changes in this probability are not fully and immediately reflected in the share price section i introduces a straightforward model of the effect of open ending potential on closed end fund value the model provides a compact expression for

crafting smallholder driven agricultural research systems in southern africa abstract the national agricultural research systems narss in sub saharan africa have made enormous progress over the past four decades in replacing european with african scientists increasing the number of scientists and shifting priorities from export to food crops nevertheless most narss are having difficulty in producing a steady stream of new technologies for small scale farms and in generating adequate financial support from their government zimbabwe and malawi are among the first countries in africa to mount indigenousled reforms of their narss this paper documents the steps taken by the agricultural research council of zimbabwe to generate a consensus among scientists farmers and policy makers to reform the national agricultural research system by increasing the voice of smallholders and other stakeholders in setting research priorities making scientists more accountable to smallholders and generating new sources of financial support from user fees and taxes on commodities malawi is pursuing a commodity approach to revitalizing its narss the experience of both zimbabwe and malawi has shown that there is no blueprint for reforming narss in africa donors can assist the reform process by supporting local initiatives to craft smallholder driven research systems that are staffed with accountable scientists who are adequately financed from local sources

contract choice in modern agriculture cash rent versus cropshare e conomists have expended enormous effort examining the rationale for various contractual arrangements in agriculture particularly sharecropping while economists have made considerable theoretical efforts to understand agricultural contracts few empirical studies have been undertaken the dearth of empirical analyses of agricultural contracts is particularly striking for modern western agriculture this is an important omission not only because the existing empirical work tends to focus on the question of efficiency but also because the theoretical models tend to examine contracts that bear little resemblance to those found in the united states today

women s empowerment in agriculture implications for technical efficiency in rural bangladesh although a great deal of research exists on gender and agriculture few studies investigate the implications of reduced gender disparities in households for technical efficiency in this article i compare the levels of technical efficiency achieved on plots operated by households with different levels of gender disparities using plot level data from the 2011 2012 bangladesh integrated household survey and drawing on indicators derived from the women s empowerment in agriculture index i estimate a stochastic frontier production function model which includes women s empowerment in agriculture as an exogenous determinant of technical inefficiency i find that reduced gender disparities within households measured in terms of the empowerment gap between spouses are associated with higher levels of technical efficiency this result extends to plots that women jointly manage with their spouses as well as those that women do not actively manage

location matters an examination of trading profits the electronic trading system xetra of the german security exchange provides a unique data source on the equity trades of 756 professional traders located in 23 different cities and eight european countries we explore informational asymmetries across the trader population traders located outside germany in non german speaking cities show lower proprietary trading profit their underperformance is not only statistically significant it is also of economically significant magnitude and occurs for the 11 largest german blue chip stocks we also examine whether a trader location in frankfurt as the financial center or local proximity of the trader to the corporate headquarters of the traded stock or affiliation with a large financial institution results in superior trading performance the data provide no evidence for a financial center advantage or of increasing institutional scale economies in proprietary trading however we find evidence for an information advantage due to corporate headquarters proximity for high frequency intraday trading

demand for improved fish feed in the presence of a subsidy a double hurdle application in kenya fish farming households demand for improved fish feed from the private market in kenya is potentially influenced by the government s feed subsidy program this article applies the double hurdle model to a cross section of fish farms to analyze demand for improved fish feed from private markets and whether the government feed subsidy program has an effect on private demand for improved feed the results indicate that households decisions to participate in the improved feed market are affected by the quantity of improved feed received from the government once the participation decision has been made we find evidence of crowding in of the private improved feed sector that is the government s allocations of subsidized feed appear to increase private sector demand in addition the price of improved feed negatively affects the quantity purchased as expected education extension contacts and ease of marketing matured fish increase household propensity to purchase improved feed commercially policies that help reduce the price of improved feed such as reduction in tariffs on imported feeds and feed ingredients will foster demand for the feed as will policies that facilitate marketing of fish at reasonable prices by households

a cultural explanation of the foreign bias in international asset allocation abstract this paper examines the foreign bias in international asset allocation following extant literature in behavioral finance we argue that a society s culture and the cultural distance between two markets play an important role in explaining the foreign bias in particular we hypothesize that the degree of a nation s uncertainty avoidance affects the foreign bias more uncertainty avoiding countries allocate less to foreign markets as does the degree of a country s individualism in individualistic countries performance is more directly attributed to a person and less to teams causing these individuals to be more aggressive in their foreign asset allocations we further expect that the degree of cultural distance between two countries affects the amount of money allocated to that market based on extensive robustness analyses we find support for our hypotheses on the role of culture in international asset allocation

contribution of fisheries and aquaculture to food security and poverty reduction assessing the current evidence following a precise evaluation protocol that was applied to a pool of 202 articles published between 2003 and 2014 this paper evaluates the existing evidence of how and to what extent capture fisheries and aquaculture contribute to improving nutrition food security and economic growth in developing and emergent countries in doing so we evaluate the quality and scientific rigor of that evidence identify the key conclusions that emerge from the literature and assess whether these conclusions are consistent across the sources the results of the assessment show that while some specific topics are consistently and rigorously documented thus substantiating some of the claims found in the literature other areas of research still lack the level of disaggregated data or an appropriate methodology to reach consistency and robust conclusions more specifically the analysis reveals that while fish contributes undeniably to nutrition and food security the links between fisheries aquaculture and poverty alleviation are complex and still unclear in particular national and household level studies on fisheries contributions to poverty alleviation lack good conceptual models and produce inconsistent results for aquaculture national and household studies tend to focus on export value chains and use diverse approaches they suggest some degree of poverty alleviation and possibly other positive outcomes for adopters but these outcomes also depend on the small scale farming contexts and on whether adoption was emergent or due to development assistance interventions impacts of fish trade on food security and poverty alleviation are ambiguous and confounded by a focus on international trade and a lack of consistent methods the influences of major drivers decentralization climate change demographic transition are still insufficiently documented and therefore poorly understood finally the evaluation reveals that evidence based research and policy narratives are often disconnected with some of the strongest and long lasting policy narratives lacking any strong and rigorous evidence based validation building on these different results this paper identifies six key gaps facing policy makers development practitioners and researchers

smallholder participation in contract farming comparative evidence from five countries summary supermarkets specialized wholesalers processors and agro exporters are transforming the marketing channels into which smallholder farmers sell produce in low income economies we develop a conceptual framework with which to study contracting between smallholders and a commodity processing firm we then synthesize results from empirical studies of contract farming arrangements in five countries ghana india madagascar mozambique and nicaragua the resulting meta narrative documents patterns of participation the welfare gains associated with participation reasons for nonparticipation the significant extent of contract noncompliance and the considerable dynamism of these value chains as farmers and firms enter and exit frequently

the diffusion of new agricultural technologies the case of crossbred cow technology in tanzania the recent literature on agricultural technology adoption shows that diffusion of new technologies varies significantly across space and time furthermore puzzles exist about why some seemingly profitable technologies are not adopted especially in livestock production we employ a hazard or duration function to explain diffusion of crossbred cow technology in a unique sample of tanzania farmers a farmer s adoption of crossbred technology depends positively on the proximity of his farm to other users on his schooling and on his access to credit and contact with extension agents

technology production environment and household income assessing the regional impacts of technological change abstract this paper clarifies the factors determining the welfare effects of improved agricultural technologies when technology diffusion is unevenly distributed across production environments household level income effects are shown to depend primarily on a whether the economy is open or closed with respect to world markets b whether households are net consumers or net producers of the commodity for which technological change occurs c whether households are adopters or non adopters of the new technology d the degree to which labor is mobile across agricultural regions and e government intervention in commodity and or factor markets a review of recent empirical work indicates considerable variation in the relative strength of these various factors across countries and that assumptions regarding the mechanism by which commodity prices are determined endogenously as in a closed economy or exogenously as in an open economy is especially critical

the importance of learning in the adoption of high yielding variety seeds to date due to the lack of panel data most micro level empirical studies of technology adoption have used cross sectional data these studies cannot examine the dynamic processes of adoption such as learning this article uses panel data to study the adoption of a new high yielding variety seed first it establishes that learning is an important variable in the adoption process second it establishes that cross sectional estimates of a dynamic process are biased but that the extent of this bias may be small third it illustrates the econometric methods needed to estimate a dynamic model when controlling for unobserved household heterogeneity

managing green revolution technology an analysis of a differential practice combination in swaziland the process of technology adoption in agriculture is not well understood numerous studies have attempted to explain the adoption process but their shortcomings have resulted in limited success almost all technological adoption studies have characterized adoption as a discrete phenomenon adopters versus nonadopters rather than a continuum that reflects the intensity of use of various technologies only a few studies have used continuous adoption variables 2 most studies view technological practices in isolation from one another that is interdependencies among these practices have largely been ignored 3 some authors have hypothesized a specific type of interdependency referred to as sequential adoption behavior 4 the sequential adoption process is one in which one modern input is adopted and then after a lag another input is adopted for example it is best to adopt modern varieties and fertilizer together because of the interactions among practices however it is argued that farmers may first adopt modern varieties and 2 3 years later adopt fertilizer h d leathers and m smale argue that the empirical evidence shows that for the most part farmers choose to adopt inputs sequentially adopting initially only part of the package and subsequently adding components over time d byerlee and e h de polanco found that the farmers in the mexican alliplano have adopted a package of biochem

farmers perceptions and adoption of new agricultural technology evidence from analysis in burkina faso and guinea west africa economists investigating consumer demand have accumulated considerable evidence showing that consumers generally have subjective preferences for characteristics of products and that their demand for products is significantly affected by their perceptions of the product s attributes however the role of farmers preferences in adoption decisions have received very limited attention in adoption studies conducted by economists this paper tests the hypothesis that farmers perceptions of technology characteristics significantly affect their adoption decisions the analysis conducted with tobit models of modern sorghum and rice varietal technologies in burkina faso and guinea respectively strongly supports this hypothesis our results provide a strong case for future adoption studies to expand the range of variables used away from the broad socio economic demographic and institutional factors to include farmers subjective perceptions of the characteristics of new agricultural technologies

risk uncertainty and learning in adoption of a crop innovation risk and uncertainty have often been suggested as causes of poor adoption of rural innovations but empirical evidence has been scarce this study focuses on a new crop type chickpeas in western australia to gather such evidence the empirical models developed are based on a theoretical framework that conceptualizes adoption as a dynamic decision process involving information acquisition and learning by doing by growers who vary in their managerial abilities risk preferences and their perceptions of the profitability and riskiness of the innovation learning encompasses improvements in skill as well as reductions in uncertainty an annual face to face survey of over 100 farmers was conducted over 3 years eliciting the farmers risk attitudes and their subjective distributions of yields and prices two limited dependent variable models tobit and probit are used to estimate the empirical model there is a high degree of goodness of fit for both models the study provides strong empirical support for the primarily economic character of the adoption decision and highlight the importance of economic risk in the process the two risk related factors with greatest impact on the adoption decision were risk aversion and relative riskiness of the innovation risk aversion tended to reduce adoption and to do so to a greater extent as relative riskiness and scale increased results also reveal the key role that trialing of the innovation plays in adoption

accounting for slacks to measure and decompose revenue efficiency in the spanish designation of origin wines with dea abstract in this paper we show how data envelopment analysis dea may be used to measure and decompose revenue inefficiency taking into account all sources of technical waste in the context of an application to assess the spanish quality wine sector in particular designation of origin do wines we try to go beyond the standard approaches which use shephard distance functions or directional distance functions to provide decomposition that incorporates slacks as a source of technical inefficiency to accomplish this we will base our analysis on a recent approach introduced in cooper et al 2011a in particular we show how an output oriented version of the weighted additive model can be used to properly identify revenue technical and allocative inefficiencies in spanish dos in the application we conclude that the main source of revenue inefficiency in this sector is technical waste and that cava can be highlighted as the do that performs as a benchmark for more numbers of units

large market shocks and abnormal closed end fund price behaviour abstract this paper investigates the short term price behaviour of closed end funds following eight large market wide shocks the findings from a sample of 63 funds continuously traded on the london stock exchange indicate that prices overreact relative to equilibrium given by net asset values the speed of reversion in discounts following market wide shocks is slower than that following fund specific shocks of a similar magnitude the post shock persistence in discounts is related more to the ease of arbitrage rather than to liquidity as proxied by fund size or to the speed of recovery in the broader market the discount decays more slowly for those funds that are difficult to arbitrage

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

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