Community based micro insurance has aroused much interest and hope in meeting health care challenges facing the poor. In this paper we explore how institutional rigidities such as credit constraints impinge on demand for health insurance and how insurance could potentially prevent poor...

The study analyzed the effects of trade uncertainty on chrysanthemum trade between Taiwan and Japan. An econometric model comprises trade uncertainty was established and policy simulations were performed to evaluate the impacts of reducing trade uncertainty.

Focusing on changes in agricultural policy, this paper examines the economic impacts on MERCOSUL member country economies arising from the creation of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) and a free trade area between MERCOSUL and the European Union (MERCOEURO). Four simulations are run...

Experimental auctions (X) use real economic incentives but are limited by available products and locally recruited samples. Stated choice (SC) surveys can use a representative sample to estimate the willingness to pay (WTP) for hypothetical products with unavailable characteristics. However, a...

In the Mid-Term Review (MTR), the European Commission proposed a series of changes to the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). An important part of these changes was significant decoupling of support payments from production. In this paper, a partial equilibrium model of the EU agricultural sector...

The Russian agricultural sector has experienced many problems since the beginning of the 1990s that resulted in a fall in farm output. Employing a production function approach and, unlike other studies, farm-level data on more than 20,000 Russian large-scale farms for the period 1995-2000, this...

When public goods are joint outputs of agricultural production, there is a trade-off between agricultural and non-agricultural provision of the public good. The principle of minimal price distortion in the reform of agricultural policies has led to a theoretical recommendation that public goods,...

A new procedure is developed to estimate innovation possibility frontiers and test for biases in technological change. Using data on four inputs (land, machinery, chemicals and labour) from central Canada (Ontario and Quebec) over the period 1926-1985, we find that the innovations possibilities...

Production inefficiency is usually analysed by its two components - technical efficiency and allocative efficiency. In this study we provide a direct measure of production efficiency of the Bangladeshi rice farmers using a stochastic profit frontier and inefficiency effects model. The data,...

This paper examines the market characteristics that push consumers in high income countries to resist GM foods, with an emphasis on negative information from environmental groups and third-party, verifiable information. For this study, unique data were collected from adult consumers in the...