Throughout the 1990s, scenic rural areas have experienced faster employment growth than their counterparts. But, rural employment growth relies on a much broader set of county characteristics than just scenic amenities. Analysis provides insight into the role of scenic amenities in rural...

The objective of this paper is to identify factors which limit the ability of Zambian farmers to increase Maize productivity and/or diversify their crop mix. Both may enable wealth accumulation, investments, and further expansion. Specifically, we link variations in agricultural decisions,...

Farm restructuring in post-communist transition countries has resulted in a broad range of farm types, such as cooperatives, companies, partnerships and sole proprietorships. This study examines which factors affect production organization choices of rural households with an emphasis on the role...

Consolidation in the U.S. pork industry continues to reduce the number of operations, while increasing the demand for hired labor. This paper explores how wages have evolved over time by decomposing the increase in wages into a change in the level of wages, human capital, and returns to human...

Under the terms of its accession to the WTO, China will likely commit to significant liberalization of its agricultural trade regimes. In this paper we consider how growing levels of urban unemployment, combined with a restrictive labor market policy, may alter the expected welfare effects of...

Agriculture productivity varies dramatically in different regions of the world. Using recent theories of economic growth and new data sets (Larson and al., 1999) as a guide, this study finds some empirical regularities between agricultural labour productivity growth, investment and education, as...

Food security indicators used in practice are static in nature, thereby foregoing the key dimension of food security. This study develops an explicitly forward-looking food insecurity indicator and relative to this dynamic benchmark, we evaluate the performance of three readily available...

This paper develops a two-sector model of growth where agriculture is considered explicitly. Key features of the model include: the reliance of agricultural production on a fixed but degrading resource base, the use by the farm sector of industrially produced inputs and differing rates of...

A socio-economic analysis of a sample of farms in Northern Côte d'Ivoire revisits two debates about the evolution of farming systems in sub-Saharan Africa. Taking into account the diversity of farming systems, the debates "Boserup vs. Malthus" and "competition vs. complementarity" between...

This paper evaluates the impact of increasing concentration of the livestock sector on the economic welfare of rural Illinois. A pooled time-series, cross-sectional model is developed to study the dynamics of structural changes in hog production for the period 1981-1997. The model tests the...